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A  WORD  "FROM  THE  TRANSLATOR. 

It  is  not  for  the  modest  translator  to  preface  by  any  words  of 
personal  appreciation  a  work  such  as  this,  which,  as  a  Russian,  I 
feel  it  an  honor  and  a  great  privilege  to  be  allowed  to  present  in 
English  garb  to  the  nation  of  all  others  whose  friendly,  enlight- 
ened, and  unbiassed  judgment  of  us  and  our  country  we  all  are 
most  anxious  to  secure.  But  inasmuch  as  my  work  is  not 
altogether  merely  a  literal  translation,  I  may  be  permitted  to  point 
out  in  how  far  a  slight  amount  of  editing  has  been  called  for. 

It  was  thought  desirable  by  the  publishers  to  let  a  moderate 
thread  of  annotation  accompany  the  text,  so  as  to  bring  into  yet 
stronger  light  the  masterly  pictures  of  Russian  life — historical, 
social,  popular, — which  Mr.  Leroy-Beaulieu  unfolds  before  the 
reader  in  a  series  as  varied  as  that  life  itself.  I  gladly  take  this 
opportunity  of  answering  the  many  questions  which  I  have  been 
asked  during  my  twenty  years  of  life  in  America,  among  Americans, 
and  try  to  tell  them  not  only  what  I  know  they  want  to  know  in 
the  way  of  characteristic  details,  but  also,  as  far  as  the  necessarily 
limited  space  at  my  disposal  will  allow,  some  of  the  things  which 
I  think  they  ought  to  know  and  do  not  as  yet.  I  imagined  myself 
reading  the  book  with  a  circle  of  interested  friends,  and  from 
time  to  time  laying  it  down  to  discuss  some  point,  to  elucidate 
some  historical  allusion,  to  illustrate  some  description,  and  some- 
times— ^very  rarely,  very  respectfully — to  offer  some  slight  objec- 
tion. Where  I  was  drawn  into  a  discussion  or  narrative  too  long 
to  be  placed  at  the  bottom  of  a  page,  I  gave  the  note  at  the  end 
of  the  chapter,  in  the  form  of  an  appendix.     To  distingniish  my 


v.l 


Rf^dOGG 


iv  A    WORD  FROM   THE    TRANSLATOR. 

annotations  from  the  author's  own,  I  adopted  the  simple  expedient 
of  marking  them  with  figures,  while  the  usual  signs — stars,  dag- 
gers, etc. — were  retained  for  the  author's  notes,  thus  doing  away 
with  the  cumbersome  initials  or  "Translator's  note"  at  the  end 
of  each  annotation. 

However  sparingly  I  made  use  of  the  latitude  left  me  in  the 
matter  of  annotation,  this  addition  to  the  original  work  threatened 
to  swell  the  English  volume  to  a  more  than  reasonable  bulk.  It 
became  necessary,  therefore,  to  have  recourse  to  condensation. 
This  delicate  and  responsible  operation  being  necessarily  left  to  my 
discretion,  caused  me  more  care  and  anxiety  than  all  the  rest  of 
the  work  put  together.  Very  rarely,  very  cautiously  and  lightly, 
with  a  fear  on  me  as  of  committing  sacrilege,  I  proceeded  to  abbre- 
viate a  paragraph  here  and  there.  Not  so  much  by  elimination — 
for  it  is  but  seldom  that  several  lines  or  as  much  as  half  a  page  at 
once  have  been  omitted — as  by  persistent  compression,  on  the 
same  principle  as  a  pound  of  down,  when  compressed,  is  a  pound 
still,  though  its  volimie  is  diminished.  "  What  will  the  author 
say  to  this  passage  ? — or  this  ? — or  this  ? ' '  was  the  test  question 
always  present  before  my  mind,  and  it  was  my  standard  that  he 
should  not  be  able  to  detect  the  abbreviations  at  the  first  reading 
unless  he  knew  where  they  were  made. 

After  long  and  careful  deliberation,  it  was  thought  advisable  to 
depart  from  the  ordinary  custom  of  having  but  one  index  for  a 
work  of  so  great  compass,  and  of  placing  this  complete  index  at 
the  end  of  the  last  volume.  Every  student  knows  how  utterly 
unpractical  and  disconcerting  such  a  system  is,  and  udll  thankfully 
welcome  an  innovation  which  places  all  the  references  within  easy 
reach  and  frees  him  from  the  necessity  of  cumbering  himself  with 
a  big  book  otherwise  unneeded,  not  to  speak  of  the  discomfort  of 
doing  without  an  index  at  all  until  the  publication  of  the  third 
volume,  which  naturally  cannot  take  place  for  some  consider- 
able time  after  the  first  appears.  The  innovation  was  the  more 
appropriate  in  the  present  case  that  the  three  volumes  of  Mr. 


A    WORD  FROM   THE    TRANSLATOR.  V 

Leroy-Beaulieu's  work  are  in  a  great  measure  independent  of  one 
another,  as  they  treat  three  entirely  separate  divisions  of  his 
immense  subject, — the  first  volume  being  devoted  to  "  the  Country 
and  People,"  the  second  to  "  The  Institutions,"  and  the  third  to 
' '  Religion  ' '  and  Church  matters. 

In  the  preparation  of  this  first  index,  I  have  classed  the  items 
more  according  to  subjects  than  to  names  and  words,  with  the 
exception  of  the  ethnographical  chapters.  This  subject  being  the 
most  unfamiliar  and  bewildering,  from  the  great  number  of  races, 
peoples,  and  tribes,  with  their  strange,  hard  names,  I  took  particu- 
lar care  to  include  all  these  names  in  the  index,  in  a  manner  to 
facilitate  immediate  reference  and  cross-reference. 

The  transliteration  of  Russian  words  and  names,  I  believe,  to 
render  the  original  sound  as  nearly  as  the  writing  of  one  language 
can  render  the  pronunciation  of  another.  This  result  will  be  helped 
by  the  system  of  accentuation  I  have  adopted,  using  both  the  ac- 
cents—  ^  and '  — in  this  way,  that  the  first  marks  a  short  vowel,  and 
the  second  a  long  one.  Take,  for  instance,  o  in  "hot"  and  in 
"hole."  In  "  hot  "  it  would  have  a  \  so:  "h6t,"  and  in  "hole" 
a ',  so :  hole ; — ^  on  i  makes  the  sound  short,  as  in  "  fin  "  ;  '  makes 
it  long,  as  in  "eat,"  " beet."  The  *  gives  the  vowel  a  very  open 
sotmd,  as  that  of  a  in  "hand,"  "  man."  A  few  simple  rules  for 
the  pronunciation  of  the  different  vowels,  some  consonants,  etc., 
are  given  in  notes,  as  the  need  of  them  occurs. 

Z.  A.  Ragozin. 
New  York,  April,  1893. 


AUTHOR'S  PREFACE. 

WRITTEN   EXPRESSI^Y   FOR  THE  AMERICAN   EDITION. 

The  work  herewith  oflfered  to  the  English-reading  public  is 
forbidden  in  Russia.  The  English  or  American  reader  will 
wonder  at  this :  he  should  not.  The  Anglo-Saxon  who  wishes 
to  judge  of  Russian  matters  must  begin  by  divesting  himself 
of  American  or  British  ideas.  For  a  book  to  become  ofl&cially 
naturalized  in  the  domains  of  the  Tsar,  it  is  not  enough  that  it 
should  breathe  the  spirit  of  sympathy  with  the  great  Slavic  peo- 
ple and  respect  for  its  sovereign.  Autocracy,  like  faith,  has  its 
noli  me  tangere.  It  cannot  allow  either  its  acts  or  its  principles 
to  be  discussed.  And  this  is  just  what  this  book  does,  with 
a  freedom  obviously  incompatible  with  the  autocratic  system. 
It  would,  therefore,  be  unreasonable  to  complain  of  the  ostracism 
decreed  against  these  volumes ;  it  rather  claims  the  author's 
thanks,  as  being  tribute  to  his  sincerity  from  the  Russian  censure. 
Indeed,  he  can  boast  a  rare  good  fortune — that  of  being  able  to 
freely  express  all  his  friendliness  towards  Russia  and  her  people, 
without  a  doubt  being  cast  on  his  independence  of  spirit. 

One  thing  I  cannot  too  much  impress  on  my  readers,  and 
that  is  that  we  are  not  justified,  we  Westerners,  in  applying  to 
Russia  the  same  notions  and  the  same  rules  as  to  Europe  or 
America.  To  do  so  would  be  the  height  of  ignorance  and  unfair- 
ness. Yet  this  is  the  very  error  into  which  most  foreigners  fall. 
They  suffer  themselves  to  be  imposed  upon  by  the  geographers, 
who  assure  them  that  Europe  extends  to  the  flat-topped  ridge 


viu  .       AUTHOR'S  PREFACE. 

of  the  Ural  and  to  the  peak-crowned  steeps  of  the  Caucasus.  All 
this  college  ballast  must  be  thrown  overboard,  these  conventional 
limits  be  done  away  with.  Russia  is  neither  Europe  nor  Asia ; 
she  is  a  world  by  itself,  situated  between  Europe  and  Asia,  and, 
in  a  way.  belonging  to  both.  The  Russian  Empire — I  trust 
I  have  succeeded  in  demonstrating  thus  much — is  indeed,  in  a 
sense,  a  European  state,  as  it  is  a  Christian  one ;  but  it  is  not 
a  state  of  our  time.  If  it  does  belong  to  Europe,  it  is  to  a 
Europe  of  another  age,  not  to  our  modem  Europe.  If  one 
would  really  understand  Russia,  one  should,  to  look  at  her, 
recede  some  three  or  four  centuries  into  the  past.  To  imagine,  on 
the  faith  of  the  almanacs,  that  Russia  as  she  is  and  the  Emperor 
Alexander  III.  belong  to  the  end  of  the  nineteenth  century,  is, 
in  spite  of  all  chronological  tables,  a  gross  anachronism.  The 
Tsar  Alexander  Alex^ndrovitch,  crowned  in  the  Kremlin  of 
Moscow,  is  not  so  much  the  contemporary  of  Queen  Victoria  as 
of  Queen  Isabel  of  Castile.  The  uprightness  of  his  intentions, 
the  loftiness  of  his  character  are  beyond  all  doubt,  but  neither 
he  nor  his  people  live  in  the  same  intellectual  atmosphere  with 
ourselves.  He  can  with  a  good  conscience  sign  ukhzes  that  our 
conscience  condemns.  If,  at  the  distance  of  four  centuries,  the 
Russian  Tsar  takes  against  his  Jewish  subjects  measures  which 
recall  the  edicts  issued  in  1492  by  los  Reyes  CatSlicos,  it  is  because 
Orthodox  Russia  is  not  unlike  Catholic  Spain  of  the  fifteenth 
century. 

Between  this  ' '  Holy  Russia ' '  and  the  democratic  republics 
and  constitutional  monarchies  of  the  West  there  lies,  for  any 
mind  trained  to  observe,  an  interval  of  several  hundred  years. 
Even  tourists,  as,  with  their  habitual  presumptuous  flippancy, 
they  steam  by  express  across  the  Russian  plains,  are  struck 
with  this  anomaly.  What  makes  it  so  very  hard  to  understand 
Russia  is  that,  modem  as  she  is  if  we  look  to  dates,  to  the  exter- 
nal side  of  her  civilization,  to  all  that  she  has  appropriated  of 
our  mechanical  sciences,  to  her  army  and  her  bureaucracy,  she  is 


AUTHORS  PREFACE.  ix 

mediaeval  still  in  the  manners  and  spirit  of  her  people.  Urban  or 
rural,  the  Russian  masses  have  not  felt  the  breath  of  either 
Renaissance,  or  Reformation,  or  Revolution.  All  that  has  been 
done  in  Europe  or  America  for  the  last  four  centuries,  since  the 
time  of  Columbus  and  I,uther,  Washington  and  Mirabeau,  is,  as 
far  as  Russia  is  concerned,  non-existent. 

Not  that  she  kept  entirely  aloof  from  the  West  or  never  tried  to 
enter  into  closer  relations  with  it :  all  her  history  ever  since  Peter 
the  Great,  and  even  before  him,  may  be  described  as  one  contin- 
uous eflFort  to  "  catch  up  "  with  Europe.  I  have  shown  in  what 
sense  Peter  and  his  descendants  succeeded  and  in  what  sense 
they  failed.  No,  the  Russia  of  the  Romauofs  certainly  never 
stood  still.  She  has  advanced  since  Peter  the  Great ;  at  times 
even  her  rulers,  in  their  haste  to  get  ahead,  attempted  to  push  on 
the  ponderous  and  compact  empire  at  an  accelerated  pace  which 
the  heavy  popular  masses  could  not  keep  up.  Contrary  to  all 
that  we  have  seen  in  Europe,  the  initiative,  the  impulse  has 
always  come  from  above,  from  those  in  power,  and  never  had 
monarchs,  or  ministers  such  a  weight  to  lift. 

But,  if  Russia  kept  progressing  in  all  directions,  Europe,  too— 
the  West — was  advancing  at  an  increasing  pace,  into  all  sorts  of 
new  roads,  so  that  Russia,  massive  and  slow,  instead  of  "catch- 
ing up,"  always  found  herself  at  a  great  distance  behind. 
Another  thing,  at  which  we  should  surely  not  wonder  :  our  nimble 
West  (Europe  and  America  both,  which  to  remote  Russia  are  all 
one) — our  unstable  West,  in  its  precipitous  race  for  that  which  it 
calls  Progress,  ended  by  arousing  a  feeling  of  uneasiness  in  the 
religiously  attuned  soul  of  old  Russia.  As  far  back  as  the  time  of 
Peter  the  Great,  there  were  the  so-called  "old  Russians" — har- 
dened Moscovites,  who  were  scandalized  at  the  overt  imitation  of 
Europe — the  Europe  of  L,ouis  XIV.  and  of  Queen  Anne.  With 
what  feelings,  then,  must  such  men,  in  our  days,  view  our  repub- 
lics and  our  parliaments,  our  class  strifes,  our  governments  and 
our  parties,  which  give  to  our  political  life  the  semblance  of  a 


X  AUTHOR'S   PREFACE. 

perpetual  civil  war,  in  which  the  weapons  are  lies  and  slander? 
Our  liberties,  too  often  meaning  oppression  of  the  weak,  and  our 
license,  spreading  itself  to  the  destruction  of  all  tradition  and 
reverence  ;  our  democracies  with  their  thirst  for  novelty  and  their 
appetite  for  wealth,  too  often  inspired  by  a  gross  and  unblushing 
materialism  ;  our  incessant  agitation,  similar,  from  afar,  to  the 
idle  plashing  of  the  waves  of  the  sea — all  our  restless  instability,  in 
short,  have  alarmed  Russia  and  the  Tsar.  After  having  long 
believed,  with  a  childlike  faith,  that  to  be  civilized  meant 
to  resemble  us,  imitate  us,  numbers  of  Russians,  even  of  the 
thin  cultivated  ' '  upper  crust, ' '  have  come  to  ask  themselves 
whether  the  wide  road  to  "  progress"  opened  out  by  our  politicians 
and  our  thinkers  does  not  end  in  a  precipitous  cliff.  And  so,  after 
placing  all  her  pride  and  vain-glory  in  copying  us  and  standing 
by  our  side,  Russia  became  distrustful,  disturbed  in  spirit  at  the 
excesses  produced  within  her  domains  by  our  imported  ideas,  and 
her  government  stopped  her  with  a  jerk.  She  is  no  longer  anx- 
ious to  resemble  us,  nor  to  keep  up  with  us.  She  thinks  it  safer 
to  remain  herself,  to  retain — or  to  recover — her  own  individuality. 
Such  is  the  prevailing  feeling  in  the  surroundings  of  the 
Emperor  Alexander  III.  For  the  last  two  centuries,  his  country's 
history  has  been  that  of  a  pendtdum  drawn  alternately  towards 
two  opposite  poles.  It  oscillates  between  European  imitation  and 
Moscovite  tradition.  Just  now,  the  attraction  of  Moscow  and  the 
Russian  pole  prevails,  as  it  did  at  one  time  under  Nicolas.  The  cur- 
rent is  no  longer,  as  under  Catherine,  Alexander  I. ,  and  Alexander 
II.,  set  towards  Europe.  Alexander  III.  prides  himself  in  being, 
first  and  foremost,  a  national  ruler.  He  is  the  Orthodox  Tsar  of 
popular  tradition.  Russian,  and  nothing  if  not  Russian.  He 
seeks  for  no  glory  save  that  of  embodying  in  himself  his  people. 
To  him,  the  Russian  Tsar  is  Russia  incarnate.  With  whatever 
feelings  we  may  regard  certain  of  his  acts,  it  is  impossible  to 
deny  the  dignity  of  his  personal  character.  Never,  perhaps, 
has    Russia    had    a    ruler    more    profoundly    imbued    with    his 


AUTHOR'S  PREFACE.  Xl 

duties,  more  earnestly  thoughtful  for  the  welfare  of  his  people. 
His  qualities  as  a  sovereign,  his  virtues  as  a  man,  are  his  own ; 
his  government  methods  are  not.  They  are  the  outcome  of  the 
soil,  of  the  autocratic  system  of  which  he  is  the  representative 
and  which  he  deems  it  his  mission  to  maintain  in  its  integrity. 
This  man,  invested  with  the  omnipotence  which  breeds  the  Neros 
and  the  Caligulas  of  the  world,  is  an  upright,  honorable  man. 
He  is  brave,  simple,  modest ;  he  is  calm  and  patient.  He  has 
shown  a  quality  most  rare  with  those  possessed  of  absolute  power  : 
self-control.  The  protracted  resistance  encountered  by  his  policy 
in  Bulgaria  has  not  goaded  him  into  one  act  of  passion.  This  auto- 
crat who,  with  one  sign,  can  put  in  motion  ten  millions  of  men,  is 
a  lover  of  peace.  He  has  made  war,  and  he  dislikes  it ;  he  has 
seen  its  horrors  too  closely  in  the  Balkan.  It  is  repugnant  to  his 
conscience  as  a  Christian  and  as  a  ruler  of  men.  If  Europe ,  all  brist- 
ling with  bayonets,  is  still  at  peace,  the  merit  thereof  lies,  in  a 
great  measure,  with  the  Emperor  Alexander  III.  Self-constituted 
warder  of  the  peace  of  the  world  : — a  grand  r6le  for  an  autocrat, 
and  we  in  France  wish  that  he  may  long  continue  to  enact  it. 

Whatever  the  future  may  bring,  whatever  the  results  the  Tsar's 
policy,  domestic  and  foreign,  may  be, — whether  Russia  is  weak- 
ened or  strengthened  thereby, — whether  the  sovereign's  authority 
is  shaken  or  confirmed  by  it  in  the  end,  one  thing  is  certain,  and 
that  is  that  this  huge  country  will  remain,  in  any  event,  one  of  the 
three  or  four  great  states  of  the  globe.  It  will,  in  our  hemisphere, 
balance  the  United  States  in  the  other.  That  alone  should  sufl&ce 
to  arouse  on  behalf  of  the  Empire  of  the  Tsars,  the  interest  of 
whoever  is  a  passionate  student  of  the  destinies  of  the  human  kind. 
However  remote  this  ponderous  Russian  people  may  appear  to  us, 
however  backward  its  civilization  and  institutions  may  seem  to 
us,  this  new-comer  among  nations  has  already  manifested  an 
original  genius  in  all  branches  of  human  activity — in  arts,  in 
science,  in  letters.  Therefore,  even  while  noting  its  defects  or 
even  vices,  we  have  not  the  right,  we  Occidentals  of  Europe  or 


Xii  AUTHOR'S  PREFACE. 

America, — we,  its  elders,  to  deal  contemptuously  with  it.  Its 
youth  may  have  many  surprises  in  store  for  us.  L<et  us  then, 
whether  we  call  ourselves  Neo- Latins  or  Anglo-Saxons,  beware  of 
the  inane  race-pride  which  is  too  often  aired  by  the  Teuton,  on 
the  Elbe  and  the  Visla,  towards  the  Slav.  The  Slav  has  by  no 
means  had  his  final  say — indeed  he  has  scarcely  yet  lisped  his  first 
words.  Because  he  is  different  from  us,  and  because  nature  and 
history  have  retarded  his  development,  we  are  not  to  pronounce 
him  doomed  to  everlasting  inferiority.  Such  presumption  may 
bring  its  own  punishment  To  show  us  that  he  has  in  him  the 
stuff  that  goes  to  make  a  great  people,  all  the  Russian  Slav  needs 
is  a  chance  and  a  couple  of  centuries'  credit. 

January,  1893. 


CONTENTS. 


BOOK  I. 

NATURE,    ClylMATE,    AND  SOIL. 
CHAPTER   I. 

PACB 

Difficulty  of  Knowing  Russia — Description  of  the  I,and — In  What  does 

it  Differ  from  Western  Europe  ? — In  What  is  it  European  ?    .         .        i 

CHAPTER   II. 

The  Two  Great  Zones — The  Zone  of  Forests  and  the  Woodless  Zone — 
Subdivisions  of  the  Latter — The  Black  Mould  Zone — The  Steppe 
Region — Accidental  Steppes — Primeval  Steppes      ....       15 

CHAPTER  III. 

Homogeneousness  of  the  Country — Its  Vast  Plains  were  Destined  to 
Political  Unity — Uneven  Population — How,  for  a  Length  of  Time, 
it  was  Distributed  after  an  Utterly  Artificial  Manner — Relative 
Importance  of  the  Various  Regions — Vital  and  Accessory  Parts — 
Russia  a  Country  Born  of  Colonization — Her  Double  Task  and 
Consequent  Contradictions 35 

BOOK    II. 
RACES  AND  NATIONALITY. 

CHAPTER   I. 

Are  the  Russian  People  a  European  People  ? — Is  there  in  Russia  a 
Homogeneous  Nationality  ? — Interest  Attaching  to  these  Questions 
— The  Ethnographical  Museum  at  Moscow — Causes  of  the  Multi- 
plicity of  Races  on  this  Uniform  Land — Reasons  why  their  Fusion 
is  not  yet  Completed — How  it  is  that  Ethnographical  Maps  can 
Famish  only  Insufficient  Data 54 


xiv  CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER   II. 


The  Three  Chief  Ethnic  Elements  of  Russia — The  Finns — Are  they 
an  Element  that  has  no  Parallel  in  Western  Europe? — Diversity 
and  Isolation  of  such  Finn  Groups  as  still  Survive — Their  Part  in 
the  Formation  of  the  Russian  People — The  Russian  Type  and  the 
Finn  Stamp — Is  this  Relationship  a  Cause  of  Inferiority  for  Russia  ? 
— Capacity  of  the  Finns  for  Civilization 63 

CHAPTER   III. 

The  Tatar  or  Turk  Element — Tatars  and  Mongols — The  Kalmyks — 
What  is  the  Proportion  of  Tatar  Blood  in  the  Russians? — The 
Tatars  in  Russia  and  the  Arabs  in  Spain — Slow  Elimination  of  the 
Tatar  Element — Ethnical  Influence  of  the  Turk  Tribes  Previous  to 
the  Mongol  Invasion — Varieties  of  Type  amidst  the  Modem  Tatars 
— ^Their  Customs  and  Character 77 

CHAPTER  IV. 

The  Slavic  Element  and  Russian  Nationality — Slavs  and  Panslavism — 
Slavs  and  Letto-Lithuanians — Formation  of  the  Russian  People  :  Its 
Different  Tribes — Differences  between  them,  of  Origin  and  Char- 
acter— Great-Russians  ( Velikoriiss) — White-Russians  {Bielorilss) — 
Little-Russians  {Malordss) — Ukrainophilism 95 

CHAPTER  V. 

Russia  and  the  Historical  Nationalities  of  her  Western  Boundaries — 
Obstacles  to  Russification — Germans  and  German  Influence — An- 
tipathy against  the  Niitnets — Germans  in  the  Baltic  Provinces  and 
in  Poland — The  Polish  Question — Mutual  Interest  of  Russians  and 
Poles  in  a  Reconciliation — Plebeian  Nationalities  and  Democratical 
Policy laa 

BOOK  III. 

THB  NATIONAL  TEMPERAMENT  AND   CHARACTER. 

CHAPTER   I. 

Utility  and  DiflBculty  of  Studying  the  National  Character — Russia  One 
of  the  Countries  where  Material  Surroundings  Act  Most  on  Man — 
Some  Effects  of  the  Climate — ^The  North,  and  Sluggishness  Brought 
on  by  Cold — Winter  and  the  Intermittence  of  I^abor — Lack  of 
Liking  for  Physical  Exertion — Habitual  Insufl&ciency  of  Food; 
Drunkenness  ;  Hygiene  and  Mortality — Cold  and  Uncleanliness  at 
Home  in  the  North — Are  Northern  Countries  More  Favorable  to 
Morality? 138 


CONTENTS.  XV 

CHAPTER  II. 

PACE 

The  Russian  Character  and  the  Struggle  against  the  Climate — The 
North  far  from  Being  the  Natural  Cradle  of  Liberty — Resignation, 
Passiveness,  and  Hardening  in  Evil — Practical  Spirit  and  Realistic 
Instincts — Impressions  Received  from  Nature ;  her  Sadness — Her 
Grandeur  and  Poverty — Effects  of  these  Contrasts — On  the  So- 
Called  Nomadic  Tendencies  of  the  Russians — The  Monotony  of 
Great-Russia  and  the  Lack  of  Originality i6i 

CHAPTER  III. 

The  Variety  of  Russian  Nature  Lies  in  the  Alternations  of  Seasons — 
In  what  Way  the  Contraries  of  Winter,  Spring,  and  Summer  have 
Reacted  on  the  National  Temperament — Russian  Character  is  all 
in  Extremes,  as  the  Climate — Its  Contradictions — Its  Flexibility — 
Its  Adaptability — An  Historical  Embodiment  of  the  National 
Character 79 

CHAPTER   IV. 

The  Russian  Character  and  Nihilism — Origin  and  Nature  of  Nihilism — 
Its  Three  Successive  Phases — By  what  Sides  it  Belongs  to  the 
National  Temperament — Combination  of  Realism  and  Mysticism — 
In  what  Sense  Nihilism  is  a  Sect — Manner  of  Nihilistic  Propaganda 
— Radical  Instincts  of  the  Russian  Mind — The  Slav  Woman  and  the 
"  Woman  Question  "  in  Russia 195 

BOOK  IV. 

HISTORY   AND  THE   ElvEMENTS   OP   CIVILIZATION. 

CHAPTER   I. 

Has  Russia  an  Historical  Inheritance  ? — Is  it  True  that  she  Differs  from 
the  West  by  the  Principles  of  her  Civilization  ? — Various  Theories 
on  this  Subject — Slavophils  and  Occidentals — Origin  and  Ten- 
dencies of  the  Slavophils — In  what  Way  the  Apologists  of  Russian 
Civilization  Meet  the  Detractors  of  Russia — Secret  Affinities 
between  Slavophilism  and  Nihilism — The  Three  Conceptions  of 
the  National  History  and  Destinies        .        .        .        .      •  .  223 

CHAPTER  II. 

The  Eirst  Russia  and  Europe — Traits  of  Kinship — Similarities  and 
Dissimilarities  —  The  Varangians  —  Christianity  and  Byzantine 
Training — The  Principalities  and  Frequent  Shiftings  of  the  National 
Centre — ^The  Great  Unhingement  of  Russian  History     .        .        .241 


Xvi  CONTEI^TS. 

CHAPTER  III. 


PAOt 


The  Tatar  Domination,  its  Effects  on  the  National  Manners  and  Char- 
acter— On  the  Reigning  Family  and  Political  Status — Causes  and 
Character  of  the  Moscovite  Autocracy — In  what  the  Russia  of  the 
Seventeenth  Century  Differed  from  the  West  of  the  Same  Period — 
Gaps  in  Russian  History 256 


CHAPTER   IV. 

Russia's  Rettim  to  European  Civilization — Antecedents  of  the  Work 
of  Peter  the  Great — The  Reformer's  Character  and  Way  of  Pro- 
ceeding— Consequences  and  Defects  of  the  Reform — Moral  and 
Social  Dualism — In  what  Manner  Autocracy  Seems  to  have  Ful- 
filled its  Historical  Task 282 


BOOK  V. 

THB  SOCIAI,  HIERARCHY  :     THE  TOWNS  AND  URBAN  CI^SSKS. 

CHAPTER   I. 

Class  Distinctions  in  Russia :  In  what  Respects  they  are  Superficial 
and  External,  in  what  Deep  and  Persistent — Blow  Struck  at  the 
Old-Time  Social  Hierarchy  by  the  Emancipation — All  Subsequent 
Reforms  Tending  to  the  Lowering  of  Class  Barriers — How,  in  this 
Respect,  the  Work  Done  by  Alexander  II.  Resembles  that  Done  by 
the  French  Revolution,  and  how  it  Differs  therefrom — Character 
and  Origin  of  all  these  Social  Distinctions — Privileged  and  Non- 
Privileged  Classes — Lack  of  Solidarity  between  the  Former ;  Lack 
of  Homogeneousness  in  Each — Accessory  Classes  ....     305 

CHAPTER   IL 

Disproportion  between  the  Urban  and  Rural  Populations — Relatively 
Small  Number  of  Towns  and  Cities  in  Russia  and  all  Slavic 
Countries — Explanation  of  this  Phenomenon — Reasons  which 
Hinder  the  Agglomeration  of  the  Population — The  Towns  and 
their  Inhabitants  before  Peter  the  Great — Efforts  of  Peter  and 
Catherine  to  Create  a  Middle  Class 322 


y 


CONTENTS.  XVII 

CHAPTER    III. 

rACB 

Classification  of  the  Urban  Population  since  Catherine  II. — The 
Mechanic  and  the  Miish-tchanln  or  "Small  Burgher" — Urban 
Proletariate — How  this  Class  has,  as  a  Rule,  Preserved  the  Same 
Spirit  as  the  Rural  Population — The  Merchant  Guilds  and  their 
Privileges — How  Emancipation  has  Made  it  Possible  for  them  to 
Own  Real  Estate— The  "Honorary  Citizens"  or  "Notables" 
among  the  Townspeople — Russia,  till  very  Lately,  had  none  of 
the  Professions  out  of  which  the  Western  Bourgeoisie  Used  to  be 
Recruited — In  how  far  the  Reforms  Help  Create  a  Middle  Class 
in  the  European  Sense 334 

BOOK   VI. 

NOBILITY    AND    TCHIN. 

CHAPTER   I. 

The  Nobles  and  the  Peasants,  Personifying  the  Two  Russias,  Appear 
,_  like  Two  Different  Nations — By  its  Origin  and  Manner  of  Recruit- 

M-  ing,  the  Russian  Dvorihnstvo  Differs  from  all  Corresponding  In- 

stitutions in  Western  Europe — Personal  and  Hereditary  Nobility — 
Great  Number  of  the  Nobles — Russian  Titles — The  Descendants  , 

of  Rurik  and  Guedimin — Why  this  High-born  Nobility  does  not 
Form  an  Aristocracy — Constitution  of  the  Russian  Family — Equal 
Division  among  the  Males — Political  Consequences  of  this  System 
— Attempts  to  Introduce  Entails  and  Primogeniture       .  .    346 

CHAPTER  II. 

How  the  Monopoly  of  Territorial  Proprietorship  could  not  Confer  on 
the  Nobility  any  Political  Power — Historical  Reasons  of  this 
Anomaly — The  Drujina  of  the  Kniazes  and  the  Free  Service  of 
the  Boy&rs — Ancient  Conception  of  Property  :  the  Vdt-tchina  and 
the  Pomiistiyi — The  Service  of  the  Tsar  the  only  Source  of  Fortune 
— ^The  Disputes  about  Precedence  at  Table — Why  no  Real  Aristoc- 
racy could  Come  out  of  all  this — The  Hierarchy  of  Families  Suc- 
ceeded by  the  Hierarchy  of  Individuals — The  "Table  of  Ranks," 
and  the  Fourteen  Classes  of  the  Tckin  —Results  of  this  Classification    362 

CHAPTER  III. 

Effects  of  the  "  Table  of  Ranks  "  on  the  Nobility— The  Functionary 
and  the  Landlord,  Formerly  Combined  in  the  Person  of  the 
Dvorianln,  Frequently  Dissevered  in  the  Nobility  of  our  Day — 
Hence  Two  Opposite  Tendencies :  Radicalism  and  Tchindvnism — 
Revolutionary  Dilettanteism — High  Society  and  the  Aristocratic 
Circles — The  French  Language  as  a  Social  Barrier — Cosmopolitism 
and  Lack  of  Nationality     .        . 381 


XVIll  CON  TEN  TS. 

CHAPTER  IV. 

TKQM 

Personal  Privileges  of  the  Nobles,  and  Prerogatives  of  their  Order — 
What  Emancipation  has  Taken  from  the  Nobles  besides  Landed 
Property — The  Dvoridnstvo  Threatened  with  Gradual  Expropria- 
'  tion — How,  though  not  Despoiled,  it  Practically  Lost  all  its  Privi- 
leges— Importance  of  the  Prerogatives  Conferred  on  the  ' '  Nobiliary 
Assemblies  "  by  Catherine  II. — Why  they  did  not  Manage  to  Benefit 
by  them — Has  Russia  the  Elements  of  a  Political  Aristocracy  ?      .     390 

BOOK  VII. 

THB  PEASANT  AND  THE  EMANCIPATION. 

CHAPTER  I. 

Russian  Literature  and  the  Apotheosis  of  the  Mujik — Various  Classes 
of  Peasants — Origin  and  Causes  of  Serfdom — Labor  Dues  and  the 
Obrdk — Situation  of  the  Peasants  before  Emancipation — Napoleon 
III. ,  Liberator  of  the  Serfs 403 

CHAPTER   II. 

Questions  Raised  by  the  Emancipation — Expectations  and  Disappoint- 
ments of  the  Nobility — Agrarian  Laws — Was  it  Possible  to  Free 
the  Serfs  without  Giving  them  Lands  ? — Reasons  and  Conditions 
of  the  Territorial  Endowment  of  the  Peasants         ....    433 

CHAPTER  in. 

Manner  and  Conditions  of  Redeeming  the  Lands — ^Advances  Made 
by  the  Exchequer — Actual  State  of  the  Operation — Slackening 
in  the  Last  Years  of  Alexander  II. — How  there  still  Subsisted,  in 
the  Form  of  Labor  Dues,  a  Sort  of  Half  Servitude,  which  was 
Abolished  only  under  Alexander  HI. — Why  Landed  Property  is 
often  a  Burden  to  the  Freedmen — Unequal  Treatment  of  the  Peas- 
ants in  the  DiflFerent  Regions — The  Gratuitous  "Quarter  Lot" — 
The  Peasant's  Disappointment — In  what  Manner  he  Understood 
Liberty 436 

CHAPTER  IV. 

Results  of  the  Emancipation — How  the  Manners  and  Social  Status 
were  less  AflFected  by  it  than  was  Expected  by  either  Adversaries 
or  Partisans — Disappointments  and  their  Causes — Economic  Re- 
sults— They  Differ  according  to  the  Regions— How  it  is  that  the 
Conditions  of  the  Master's  Existence  have  been  Modified  by  the 
Emancipation,  on  the  Whole,  more  than  the  Peasant's — Moral 
and  Social  Consequences 450 


CONTENTS.  xix 

BOOK  VIII. 
MIR,  FAMILY,  AND  VILLAGR  COMMUNITIES. 

CHAPTER   I. 

PAGB 

Land  Tenure  Unchanged  by  Emancipation — Is  the  Mir  a  Slavic  Insti- 
tution ? — Antiquity  and  Origin  of  Communal  Property  in  Russia — 
DiflFering  Views  on  the  Subject — Difference  between  Moscovite 
Russia  and  Western  Europe  from  the  Standpoint  of  the  Agrarian 
System 474 

CHAPTER  IL 

The  Village  Communities  Have  their  Prototype  in  the  Family — 
The  Commune  Frequently  Looked  upon  as  an  Enlarged  Fam- 
ily— Filiation  of  the  Village  Communities  from  the  Family  Com- 
munities— The  Peasantry's  Patriarchal  Manners  and  the  Ancient 
Village  Family — Authority  of  the  Head  of  a  Household — Com- 
munity of  Possessions — Domestic  Bonds  Relaxed  by  the  Eman- 
cipation— Increase  of  Family  Partitions — Material  Inconvenience 
and  Moral  Advantages  Accruing  Therefrom — Servitude  of  the 
Women — Progress  of  Individualism  ;  its  Consequences  .        .        .    486 

CHAPTER  IIL 

Village  Communities :  Manner  of  Division  and  Allotments — Large 
Communities  and  Free  Use  of  Vacant  Lots — The  Mir  of  the  Present 
Day  and  Periodical  Re-allotments — Division  by  "  Souls  "  and  by 
Tidglos — Epochs  of  Division  ;  Disadvantages  of  Frequent  Re- 
allotments — A  Portion  of  the  Defects  Charged  to  the  Mir  Due 
to  the  Large  Agglomerated  Villages — Consequences  of  Excessive 
Parcelling 505 

CHAPTER  rv. 

The  Mir  in  Theory  and  Practice — The  Material  Equality  of  the  Lots 
does  not  Always  Imply  Equitable  Distribution — Division  Accord- 
ing to  the  Working  Capacity  or  Resources  of  the  Laborers — Story 
of  One  Commune — "  Sovilless  "  Fainilies  ;  Strong,  "Half-Power," 
Weak  Families — The  Mir  as  a  Providence — Arbitrariness  and  In- 
justice— Usury — The  Vampires  or  "  JT/ir-Eaters  " — Rural  Oligar- 
chy— Landless  Peasants  and  Rural  Proletariate      ....    521 


XX  CONTENTS, 

CHAPTER  V. 

VACS 

Partisans  and  Opponents  of  the  Communal  System — Frequent  Exag- 
gerations in  Both  Camps — Are  the  Faults  most  Justly  Imputed  to 
the  Mir  All  Inherent  to  Collective  Tenure  ? — How  Many  are  Due 
to  Communal  Solidarity  and  to  the  Fiscal  System — Sittiation  Cre- 
ated for  the  Communes  by  Emancipation  and  Redemption — The 
Extent  of  Peasant  Lots — The  Mir  does  not  yet  Really  Own  the 
Land — The  Village  Communities  will  be  in  a  Normal  Condition  only 
after  they  have  done  Paying  the  Redemption  Annuities       .        .    534 

CHAPTER  VI. 

The  Manner  of  Dissolving  a  Community — The  Peasants  of  Any  Village 
are  Always  Free  to  Suppress  the  Mir — Why  they  don't  Do  it 
more  Frequently — What  they  Think  of  the  Mir — How  the  Mir 
has  No  Objection  whatever  to  Individual  I*roperty,  even  though 
it  Usually  Upholds  the  Communal  System — Purchases  of  Land  by 
Peasants — Distribution  of  the  Arable  Lands  between  the  Com- 
munes and  Other  Proprietors — Utility  and  Functions  of  Personal 
Property— Can  Both  Modes  of  Tenure  Co-Exist  Some  Day  ?  .    548 

CHAPTER  VII. 

The  Communal  System  and  the  Struggle  between  "  Great"  and 
"  Small "  Landed  Property — The  Mir,  the  Peasant's  Entail — 
Transformations  which  the  Agrarian  Commune  Might  Undergo — 
Can  this  System  be  Adapted  to  Modem  Manners  ? — What  is  Legis- 
lature to  Do  with  Regard  to  Collective  Tenure  ? — Can  we  See  in 
the  Mir  a  Palladium  of  Society  ? — Illusions  on  this  Subject — The 
Communal  System  and  the  Population  Problem — Collective  Ten- 
ure and  Emigration — Village  Communities  and  Agrarian  Socialism    563 

INDEX 581 


PART  I. 


The  Country  and  Its  Inhabitants 

NATURE,  CLIMATE,  AND  SOIL.      RACES  AND  NATIONALITY 

THE  NATIONAL  CHARACTER  AND  NIHILISM 

HISTORY  AND  THE  ELEMENTS  OF  CIVILIZATION 

THE  SOCIAL  CLASSES 

THE  PEASANTRY  AND  THE  EMANCIPATION 

THE  MIR 


/^^ 

^M 

^^ 

^ 

^^^ 

W^ 

^^Mi 

^^® 

^^ii^^i 

1 

0^^^f3l 

^^m 

^^^ 

I'^p^^ 

THE  EMPIRE  OF  THE  TSARS 

AND 

THE  RUSSIANS. 


BOOJ^  I. 
NATURE,  CLIMATE,  AND  SOII* 


CHAPTER  I. 

DiflBculty  of  Knowing  Russia — Description  of  the  Land — In  What  does  it 
Differ  from  Western   Europe? — In  What  is  it  European? 

Ignorance  of  all  that  is  foreign  has  always  been  one  of  France's 
chief  blemishes,  one  of  the  chief  causes  of  her  disasters.  This 
vice  of  our  national  education  we  are  at  present  seeking  to  remedy  : 
we  are  making  up  our  minds  to  let  our  children  learn  the  lan- 
guages of  our  neighbors  ;  but,  if  it  is  effectually  to  benefit  us  in 
our  politics,  our  knowledge  of  foreign  things  must  not  be  limited 
to  those  nations  only  who  actually  touch  our  boundaries.  Like 
ancient  Greece,  modern  Europe  forms  one  family,  the  members  of 
which,  even  in  the  midst  of  their  quarrels,  keep  mutually  depen- 
dent on  one  another.  The  interests  of  external  politics  are  com- 
mon to  all ;  not  much  less  so  are  those  of  internal  politics. 

There  is,  amidst  the  European  states,  one  which,  notwithstand- 
ing its  remoteness,  has  more  than  once  weighed  heavily  on  West- 
em  Europe.  It  is  backed  up  against  the  East,  and,  between  it 
and  France,  there  is  only  Germany.     It  is  the  largest  of  European 


2         THE  EMPIRE  OF  THE   TSARS  AND    THE  RUSSIANS. 

States,  the  one  which  has  the  greatest  number  of  inhabitants,  and 
it  is  the  least  known  ;  in  many  ways  the  Mussulman  East  and  the 
two  Americas  are  known  better.  Distance  no  longer  can  separate 
Russia  from  the  West ;  it  is  Russia's  manners,  institutions,  lan- 
guage, which  keep  up  the  high  barriers  that  rise  between  her 
and  the  rest  of  Europe  ;  political  and  religious  prejudice  raise  up 
others.  lyiberals  or  Democrats,  Catholics  or  Protestants,  all  alike 
find  it  difficult  to  keep  their  Western  ideas  from  imparting  a  false 
coloring  to  the  pictures  they  draw  of  the  Empire  of  the  Tsars.  The 
pity  aroused  by  the  victims  of  her  official  poHtics  has  for  a  long 
time  warped  our  judgment  of  Russia,'  She  was  seen  only  through 
Poland  and  was  mostly  known  only  from  the  pictures  drawn  by 
her  adversaries. 

Russians  are  fond  of  saying  that  only  Russians  are  competent  to 
write  about  Russia.  We  should  be  perfectly  willing  to  leave  to 
them  the  task  of  depicting  themselves,  could  they  bring  to  it  the 
same  earnestness,  the  same  sincerity,  the  same  interest  that  we 
bring  to  the  study  of  them."  Moreover,  if  foreigners  are  preju- 
diced, so  naturally  is  each  nation  on  its  own  accoimt.  To 
national  prejudice  are  added  party  views,  school  theories.  No- 
where have  I  heard  a  greater  diversity  of  judgments  on  Russia 
than  in  that  country  itself. 

How  can  we  expect  to  understand  a  nation  that  is  still  endeav- 
oring to  read  its  own  riddle,  that  moves  on  with  jerky,  unsteady 
gait,  with  no  well-defined  goal  as  yet,  that — to  quote  one  of  its  own 
sayings — has  left  one  bank,  but  has  not  as  yet  reached  the  opposite 
one  !  In  these  successive  transformations  we  must  discriminate 
between  what  is  superficial,  external,  official,  and  what  is  deep- 
lying,  permanent,  national.  No  people  known  to  history,  possibly 
no  country  in  the  world,  has  undergone  so  many  changes  in  the 

'  Earnestness  and  especially  sincerity  have  hardly  been  tmtil  now  the 
distinctive  qualities  of  foreigners'  study  of  us, — if  the  name  "  study  "  may  be 
applied  to  what  has  always  been  more  like  a  blind,  hostile  arraignment.  It 
is  only,  so  to  speak,  since  yesterday  that  things  have  begun  to  mend  in  this 
respect. 


NATURE,    CLIMATE,    AND   SOIL.  3 

course  of  one  or  two  centuries  ;  not  one,  with  the  exception  of 
Italy  and  Japan,  has  seen  similar  ones  in  the  course  of  a  score  of 
years.  The  reforms  of  all  sorts  have  been  so  numerous  that  the 
most  attentive  observer  finds  it  difficult  to  keep  track  of  them.  The 
application  of  them  is  still  so  recent,  at  times  so  incomplete  and  so 
much  disputed,  that  it  is  not  easy  to  appreciate  all  their  effects. 
Old-time  Russia,  the  Russia  of  which  we  had  some  kind  of  a 
knowledge,  has  perished  with  the  abolition  of  serfdom.  New  Russia 
is  a  child  whose  features  are  not  yet  fixed,  or,  better  still,  a  youth 
at  the  critical  age  at  which  face,  voice,  and  character  are  in  the 
act  of  being  moulded  for  life. 

Does  this  imply  that  in  studying  contemporary  Russia  we 
should  forget  the  past  ?  By  no  means :  the  past  everywhere 
shows  through  the  present.  All  the  institutions,  all  the  charac- 
teristics peculiar  to  Russia,  all  that  makes  her  different  from 
Western  Europe,  has  deep  roots  which  must  be  exposed  to  the 
light,  or  the  troubles  under  which  she  labors  will  remain  incom- 
prehensible. Whatever  violence  the  hand  of  a  despot  gifted  with 
genius  may  seemingly  have  done  to  her  destiny,  her  people  were 
not  exempted  from  the  laws  which  regulate  the  growth  of  every 
society.  Her  civilization  is  bound  up  in  the  land,  in  the  people's 
life-blood,  in  its.  historical  training  of  centuries.  As  is  the  case 
with  all  states,  and  in  spite  of  seeming  breaks,  the  present  of  Rus- 
sia is  the  outcome  of  her  past,  and  the  one  is  not  to  be  understood 
without  the  other.  If  we  wish  to  gain  a  profitable  knowledge  of 
this  people,  at  once  so  similar  to  and  different  from  their  European 
brethren,  the  first  thing  needful  is  to  realize  the  grand  physical 
and  moral  influences  which  ruled  its  growth  and  helped  fashion  it, 
which,  even  in  spite  of  itself,  will  for  a  long  time  yet  hold  it  under 
their  sway.  The  real  bearing,  the  probable  results  in  the  near 
future  of  all  the  changes  which  are  going  on  in  Russia  escape  our 
grasp  if  we  remain  in  ignorance  of  the  conditions  under  which 
labor  the  development  and  capabilities  for  civilization  of  the 
country  and  the  people. 


4        THE  EMPIRE  OF   THE   TSARS  AND    THE  RUSSIANS. 

This  is  a  great,  an  immense  question,  and,  as  though  not  yet 
sufl5ciently  swathed  in  darkness,  it  is  further  obscured  by  invet- 
erate prejudices.  It  is,  in  fact,  the  first  and  last  problem,  and  if  that 
is  unsolved,  any  study  of  Russia  must  remain  both  baseless  and 
barren  of  results.  In  order  to  appreciate  her  genius  and  resources, 
'her  present  and,  still  more,  her  future,  it  is  imperative  to  know  the 
soil  which  nourishes  her  people,  the  races  that  compose  it,  the 
history  she  has  lived,  the  religion  to  which  she  owes  her  moral 
training.  I^et  us  begin  with  nature,  soil,  and  climate  ;  let  us  see 
what  kind  of  moral  and  material  development  they  allow  of,  what 
is  the  population,  and  what  the  power  the  promise  of  which  they 
hold  out  to  her. 

The  first  thing  that  strikes  one  at  the  first  glance  at  a  map  of 
the  Russian  Empire,  is  its  extent.*  It  covers  over  twelve  million 
square  miles  ;  of  these,  something  over  three  fall  to  the  share  of 
Europe,  i.  e. ,  about  eleven  times  the  size  of  France  in  her  mutila- 
ted condition,  fifteen  or  sixteen  times  the  size  of  imited  Italy,  or 
the  three  United  Kingdoms,  f  These  colossal  dimensions  are  so 
much  out  of  proportion  with  the  smallness  of  the  so-called  "  great 
European  States,"  that,  in  order  to  bring  it  fairly  within  the  grasp 
of  our  imagination,  one  of  this  century's  greatest  scientists  sought 
the  help  of  astronomy.  According  to  Alexander  von  Humboldt, 
the  portion  of  our  globe  which  owns  the  sway  of  Russia,  is  larger 
than  the  face  of  the  moon  at  its  full.  J    In  that  empire,  the  vastness 

*  I  would  remind  the  reader  that  all  this  description  of  Russia  and  the 
people  who  inhabit  her  was  written  before  the  volume  of  the  GSographie 
Universelle  of  Mr.  Elis^e  Reclus,  devoted  to  Scandinavian  and  Russian 
Europe,  saw  the  light.  (See  Revue  des  Deux  Mondes,  15th  August,  15th 
September,  1873.) 

t  It  is  no  longer  correct  to  say  that  the  Russian  Empire  is  the  most  ex- 
tensive in  the  world.  The  British  Empire,  continually  enlarged  as  it  is  by 
annexations  in  Asia,  Australia,  and  especially  Africa,  surpasses  it  in  acreage ; 
as  to  its  population,  it  nearly  trebles  that  of  the  Northern  Empire,  but  to 
the  latter  remains  the  twofold  advantage  of  compactness  of  territories  and 
greater  homogeneousness  in  the  population. 

X  Central  Asia,  vol.  iii.,  p.  34. 


NATURE,    CLIMATE,   AND   SOIL.  5 

of  which  can  be  realized  only  with  the  help  of  the  stars,  the  land 
has  no  visible  boundaries.  Its  plains,  the  hugest  on  our  planet, 
stretch  on  into  the  heart  of  the  old  continent  until  they  reach  the 
mountain  masses  of  Central  Asia  ;  between  the  Black  and  Caspian 
Seas  they  are  barred  by  the  gigantic  bulwark  of  the  Caucasus,  the 
foot  of  which  lies  partly  below  the  level  of  the  sea,  while  its  sum- 
mits rise  near  on  3,000  feet  above  the  height  of  those  of  Mont 
Blanc.  To  the  northwest  Russia  owns  the  lakes  I^^doga  and 
Oni6ga,  the  largest  of  Europe ;  to  the  northeast,  in  Siberia,  that 
of  Baikal,  the  largest  of  Asia  ;  to  the  south,  the  Caspian  and  Aral 
Seas,  the  largest  lakes  in  the  world.  Her  rivers  are  in  proportion 
with  her  plains ;  in  Asia  she  has  the  Obi,  the  Yeniss^y,  the  Lena, 
the  Amoor ;  in  Europe,  the  Dniepr,  the  Don,  the  Volga,  that 
central  artery  of  the  countrj^  a  river  that,  with  its  sinuous  course, 
measuring  nearly  2,400  miles,  does  not  altogether  belong  to 
Europe.  Nine  tenths  of  the  Russian  territory  are  as  yet  almost 
untenanted,  and  Russia  already  numbers  over  ninety  million  souls, 
twice  as  many  as  the  most  populous  of  European  states. 

If  we  look  only  at  European  Russia,  from  the  Glacial  Ocean 
down  to  the  Caucasus,  we  ask  ourselves  :  Does  this  country  really 
belong  to  Europe  ?  Are  only  the  proportions  laid  out  on  a  larger 
scale  and  is  nothing  changed  but  these?  or  is  not  rather  this 
prodigious  expanding  of  land  sufl5cient  to  separate  Russia  from 
Western  Europe  ?  Are  not  the  conditions  of  civilization  modified 
by  the  ungainly  enlargement  of  the  stage  which  is  to  be  filled  by 
man  ?  The  contrast  of  size  alone  would  make  out  between  Old 
Europe  and  Russia  a  difference  of  capital  importance,  but  is  this 
diflference  the  only  one  ?  Do  not  other  and  no  less  important  con- 
trasts flow  from  this  primeval  contrast?  Russia's  climate,  her 
soil,  her  geographical  structure — are  all  these  European  ? 

Instead  of  being,  like  Africa,  attached  to  the  common  trunk  of 
the  Old  World  by  a  narrow  joint,  Europe  is  shaped  like  a  triangu- 
lar peninsula,  the  whole  broad  base  of  which  leans  against  Asia 
anr"  is  one  body  with  her.     There  is  only  a  slight  ridge  between 


6         THE  EMPIRE   OF   THE    TSARS  AND    THE  RUSSIANS. 

them,  a  mountain  chain  remarkable  neither  for  width  nor 
height,  and  below  this  chain  which  is  really  no  partition  at  all, 
there  is  nothing  but  a  gap  wide  open  and  unprotected.  Thus 
soldered  on  to  Asia,  Russia  is  similarly  shaped. 

Two  main  features  distinguish  Europe  amidst  all  the  regions 
of  the  globe  :  in  the  first  place,  her  piecemeal  structure — ' '  all  cut 
up  into  small  pieces  ' '  by  the  sea,  to  use  the  words  of  Montesquieu  ; 
^'peninsular  articulate ^^'  to  use  those  of  Humboldt ;  in  the  second 
place,  a  climate  temperate  as  no  other  under  the  same  latitude — 
a  climate  which  is  in  a  great  measure  the  consequence  of  this 
very  structure.  Russia,  on  the  other  hand,  adhering  to  Asia  by 
her  longest  side,  bordered  to  the  north  and  northwest  by  ice- 
bound seas  which  yield  to  the  shoreland  but  few  of  the  advantages 
usually  enjoyed  by  littorals, — Russia  is  one  of  the  most  compact, 
most  eminently  continental  countries  on  the  face  of  the  globe. 

Differing  thus  from  Europe  in  structure,  Russia  also  lacks 
Europe's  climate — temperate,  softened  by  the  encompassing  waters. 
Russia's  climate  is  continental,  i.  e.,  almost  equally  extreme  in 
winter-cold  and  summer-heat.  Hence  the  averages  drawn  from  the 
varying  temperatures  are  deceitful.  The  isothermal  lines  rise  up 
towards  the  pole  in  summer ;  sink  low  down  southward  in  win- 
ter, so  that  the  greater  part  of  Russia  is  comprised,  in  January, 
within  the  fiigid  zone,  and  within  the  torrid  zone  in  July.  The 
very  breadth  of  her  lands  condemns  her  to  extremes.  The  seas 
that  bathe  some  of  her  boundaries  are  either  too  distant  or  insuffi- 
cient in  exte",t  to  be  to  her  what  they  are  to  other  countries 
by  turns — ^reservoirs  of  warmth  and  breeders  of  coolness.  No- 
where in  the  west  of  Europe,  do  we  see  winters  so  long  and 
severe,  or  summers  so  hot.  Russia  remains  excluded  from  the 
influences  which  temper  the  cold  to  the  rest  of  Europe,  from  the 
Ocean  ciurents  as  well  as  from  the  winds  of  the  Sahara.  The 
long  Scandinavian  peninsula,  which  stretches  out  between  her 
and  the  Atlantic,  turns  away  from  her  shores  the  great  stream 
of  warm  water,  the  gift  of  the  New  World  to  the  Old.     Instead  of 


NATURE,    CLIMATE,   AND  SOIL.  7 

these  mild  influences,  it  is  the  polar  ices,  Siberia,  the  Arctic  region 
of  Asia,  that  hold  Russia  under  their  sway.  Against  that  proxim- 
ity, the  Ural  chain  is  but  an  apparent  defence,  neutralized  by  its 
inconsiderable  elevation  and  by  its  position,  nearly  perpendicular 
to  the  equator.  Vainly  Russia  stretches  down  to  the  latitude 
of  Pau  and  Nizza,  she  must  go  down  all  the  way  below  the 
Caucasus  to  find  a  bulwark  against  the  north  wind.  The  bulk  of 
the  land  being  perfectly  flat,  is  open  to  all  the  atmospheric  currents, 
to  the  arid  breath  from  the  deserts  of  Central  Asia  no  less  than 
to  the  winds  from  the  polar  circle. 

This  absence  of  mountains  and  consequently  of  valleys  is 
another  of  the  broad  distinctive  features  of  Russian  nature,  as 
opposed  to  European  nature.  This  horizontality  of  the  soil,  we 
may  say,  is  not  merely  a  superficial  characteristic,  it  is  an  essential 
featinre  of  the  geology  as  well  as  the  geography  of  the  country. 
The  flattening  of  the  outer  crust  is  only  a  result  of  the  parallelism 
of  the  underground  stratification.  Instead  of  frequently  rising 
to  the  surface,  as  in  the  West,  and  oflering  a  rich  variety  of  land- 
scape, soil,  and  culture,  the  divers  geological  tiers  remain  hori- 
zontally stratified,  presenting  immense  tracts  of  identical  soil,  re- 
quiring identical  agricultural  treatment.  On  the  greater  part  of 
this  vast  expanse,  one  would  think  that  the  crust  of  the  earth  has 
been  spared  the  commotions  which  have  everywhere  left  so  many 
traces  in  the  other  half  of  Europe.  The  most  ancient  formations 
are  there  found  without  a  break,  apparently  unaltered  by  either 
fire  or  water.  Slowly  emerged  out  of  the  sea,  the  land  pre- 
serves its  marine  aspect  in  its  immense,  slightly  undulating  plains, 
which  easily  carry  fancy  back  to  the  relatively  recent  period  when 
across  this  depression  the  Baltic  blended  its  waters  with  those 
of  the  Black  Sea  and  possibly  the  Caspian  with  those  of  the  Arctic 
Ocean,  separating  Europe  from  Asia.  The  mind's  eye  has  no 
difl&culty  in  figuring  to  itself  the  Glacial  period,  when  the  floating 
icebergs  carried  into  the  heart  of  Russia,  even  to  Vorbnej  on  the 
Don,  the  erratic  blocks  of  Finnic  granite  with  which  the  centre 


8         THE  EMPIRE   OF   THE    TSARS  AND   THE  RUSSIANS. 

of  the  empire  is  to  this  day  thickly  studded,  down  to,  if  not  be- 
yond, the  line  of  the  Black  Mould  zone. 

Another  great  blessing  of  European  nature  is  almost  lacking 
in  Russia — the  proper  degree  of  moisture,  which  the  Atlantic 
brings  and  the  Alps  store  up  for  the  West.  Russia,  debarred  from 
her  share  in  this  blessing  by  the  remoteness  of  seas  and  want  of 
mo tm tains,  is  thereby  deprived  of  a  principal  source  of  wealth. 
The  winds  from  the  ocean  reach  her  almost  totally  robbed  of  their 
water-vapors ;  those  from  Asia  have  lost  all  theirs  long  before 
they  touch  Russian  soil.  From  west  to  east  moisture  goes 
steadily  decreasing  until  it  is  reduced  to  the  barest  minimum  in 
Central  Asia.  The  wider  the  continent  expands  the  poorer  it 
becomes  in  rain.  At  Kaz^n  already  it  rains  only  half  as  much 
as  in  Paris.  Hence,  over  a  vast  region  in  the  south,  the  two 
principal  factors  of  fertility,  warmth  and  moisture,  are  dis- 
joined ;  hence,  in  part  at  least,  those  woodless,  arid  steppes,  so 
un-European  to  the  eye,  that  cover  the  entire  southeast  of 
the  empire. 

If  in  all  that  concerns  the  physical  conditions — structure,  cli- 
mate, moisture — Russia  stands  in  complete  opposition  towards 
Western  Europe,  she  is  in  all  of  them  narrowly  related  to  the 
Asiatic  countries  she  touches  on.  If  we  go  by  natural  land- 
marks, Europe  proper  begins  at  the  narrowing  of  the  continent  be- 
tween the  Baltic  and  Black  Seas  ;  and  Russia  fits  better  the  thickset 
bulk  of  Asia,  of  which  she  is  a  prolongation  and  from  which  the 
geographers'  fictitious  boundaries  cannot  separate  her. 

In  the  southeast  there  are  no  natural  boundaries  at  all,  and 
that  is  why  geographers  have  by  turns  proposed  the  Don,  the 
Volga,  the  Ural  or  Yaik,  or  even  the  depression  of  the  Obi,  as 
firontier  landmarks.  The  desert  steppes  that  make  up  the  centre 
of  the  old  continent  stretch  into  Russia  by  the  wide  gap  opening 
between  the  Ural  chain's  southern  links  and  the  Caspian.  From 
the  lower  course  of  the  Don  to  the  lake  of  Aral,  all  these  low 
steppes  that  lie  on  both  sides  of  the  Volga  and  the  Ural  River, 


NATURE,    CLIMATE,    AND   SOIL.  9 

form  a  peculiar  region,  the  dried  up  bed  of  an  ancient  sea,  of  which 
the  shores  are  quite  distinguishable,  and  of  which  the  vast  salt 
lakes  known  as  the  Caspian  and  Aral  Seas  are  the  remnants.  By 
a  hydrographic  freak  which  has  exercised  a  considerable  influence 
on  the  destinies  of  the  Russian  people,  it  is  into  one  of  those 
locked-up  seas,  decidely  Asiatic  as  they  are,  that  the  great  artery 
of  Russia,  the  Volga,  debouches,  after  turning  her  back  on  Europe 
nearly  from  her  very  source. 

North  of  the  Caspian  steppes,  from  the  52d  degree  of  latitude  to 
the  uninhabitable  polar  regions,  a  long  chain  of  mountains,  the 
longest  meridian  chain  of  the  ancient  continent,  seems  from  a 
distance  to  place  a  wall  between  Russia  and  Asia.  The  Russians 
of  old  used  to  call  it  "  the  stone  belt," — indeed  the  word  "  Ural " 
means  ' '  belt ' ' ;  yet  and  in  spite  of  its  name,  the  Ural  marks  the  end 
of  Asia  on  one  side,  only  to  mark  its  fresh  start  nearly  unaltered 
on  the  European  slope.  Slowly  descending  in  terraces  into 
Europe,  the  Ural  is  not  so  much  a  chain  as  "  a  table-land  crowned 
with  a  line  of  moderately  high  summits."  Most  of  the  time  it 
presents  only  low-rounded  ridges  covered  with  forests,  like  those 
of  the  Vosges  and  the  Jura.  The  central  portion  is  depressed  to 
such  a  degree  that  in  the  principal  passes  from  Siberia  into  Russia, 
for  instance  from  Perm  to  Yekaterinbiirgh,  the  eye  vainly  seeks 
for  summits,  and  that  in  order  to  conduct  a  railroad  through  the 
pass,  the  engineers  had  neither  tunnels  nor  any  other  great  works 
to  execute.  In  this  high  latitude,  where  the  plains  remain  seven 
or  eight  months  under  snow,  none  of  the  summits  of  this  long 
chain  reaches  the  line  of  everlasting  snows,  none  of  its  valleys 
encloses  a  glacier.  The  Ural  really  does  not  separate  either  the 
climates  or  the  floras  or  faunas  of  its  two  sides.  Owing  to  its 
direction  which  runs  nearly  perpendicularly  due  south,  it  allows 
the  winds  from  the  pole  to  blow  almost  equally  imhindered  along 
both  its  opposite  slopes.  Russia  is  the  same  on  both,  or  rather 
Siberia  is  only  an  exaggerated  edition  of  Russia,  or  Russia  a  toned 
down  edition  of  Siberia.     The  Russian  plains  start  afresh  east  of 


lO      THE  EMPIRE  OF  THE    TSARS  AND   THE  RUSSIANS, 

the  Ural,  as  vast,  as  monotonous  in  the  basin  of  the  Obi  as  in  that 
of  the  Volga  ;  offering  the  same  uniform  platitude,  the  same 
horizontality  of  the  soil  and  geological  sediments.  On  both 
sides  the  vegetation  is  identical.  One  solitary  tree, — the  arole  of 
the  Alps,  Pinus  umbra — scarcely  marks  the  difference  between 
the  forests  on  the  respective  sides.  Not  until  one  reaches  the  heart 
of  Siberia,  the  Yeniss^y  in  its  higher  course,  and  I^ake  Baikal, 
does  one  encounter,  springing  from  a  different  soil,  a  new  flora,  a 
new  fauna.  The  upheaval  which  raised  the  Ural  was  not  suffi- 
cient to  disjoin  the  two  regions  separated  by  the  ridge  in  all 
that  concerns  appearance  and  real  unity.  Instead  of  being  a 
boundary  or  bulwark,  it  is  to  the  two  Russias  only  the  reposi- 
tory of  precious  mineral  wealth.  The  rocks  of  eruptive  or 
metamorphic  origin  bear  ores  which  were  lacking  in  the  regu- 
larly stratified  subsoil  of  the  wide  plains.  The  Ural  chain  no 
more  separates  the  two  than  does  the  river  to  which  it  gives 
its  own  name,  and  one  day  when  Eastern  Siberia  will  be  more 
densely  peopled,  the  Ural  will  be  looked  upon  as  the  central 
axis,  the  spinal  coltunn  equally  belonging  to  both  great  halves 
of  the  empire. 

Considered  thus  as  a  whole,  consisting  of  two  similar  halves, 
Russia  proves  herself  decidedly  different  from  Europe.  Shall  we 
therefore  pronounce  her  part  and  parcel  of  Asia  ?  Shall  we,  in  the 
name  of  nature,  cast  her  back  on  the  Old  World,  in  one  lot  with  the 
sleeping  or  stationary  peoples  of  the  Far  East  ?  Far  from  it.  Russia 
is  no  more  Asiatic  than  she  is  European.  By  her  soil  and  her 
climate,  by  the  bulk  of  her  natural  conditions,  she  differs  no  less 
from  historical  Asia  than  from  Europe  proper  ;  it  is  not  by  mere 
accident  that  the  Asiatic  civilizations  have  all  been  wrecked  on 
her.  Astride  on  the  Ural,  Russia,  by  herself,  forms  an  isolated 
region,  with  physical  characteristics  peculiar  to  herself,  a  region 
enclosing  all  the  northern  plains  of  the  old  continent,  descending 
too  low  down  to  be  called  boreal,  but  which  the  name  of  "  Russian 
Region  "  would  suit  well,  and  which,  from  the  deserts  of  Central 


NATURE,    CLIMATE,   AND   SOIL.  II 

Asia  to  the  "  tundras^'  '  of  the  polar  circle,  from  the  estuary  of 
the  Danube  to  the  sources  of  the  Yeniss^y  and  the  Lena,  comprises 
nearly  the  whole  of  the  colossal  depression  which  covers  the  north 
of  the  ancient  world,  Humboldt's  "  I/)wer  Europe  "  and  "  I^wer 
Asia."  "Russia  is  a  sixth  part  of  the  world,"  the  Emperor 
Alexander  III.  is  reported  to  have  once  said — and  geography  has 
nothing  to  object  to  the  haughty  utterance.'  Russia's  natural 
afl&nities  point  to  North  America  rather  than  to  old  Asia  or  West- 
em  Europe — to  that  America  towards  which  she  reaches  out  by 
her  eastward  stretching  dependence,  Siberia.  With  her  climate 
always  in  extremes  and  her  viewless  expanses  of  territory,  she 
was  too  rough  a  land,  constructed  on  too  wide  a  scale,  ever  to 
have  been  the  cradle  of  civilization,  but  was  one  of  the  countries 
most  admirably  fitted  for  its  reception.  Like  North  America,  like 
Australia,  Russia,  short  of  her  extreme  parts,  offers  to  Europe  an 
assimilable  soil,  a  field  where  human  activity  can  unfold  itself  on 
the  very  widest  scale. 

With  her  unkind  climes,  her  meagre  forests  and  woodless 
steppes,  with  her  lack  of  stone  and  building  materials,  Russia  may 
seem  but  a  poor  shelter  for  the  gorgeous  plant  of  European  culture. 
But  what  man  needs  is  less  the  spontaneous  yield  of  a  given  soil, 
than  the  facility  to  master  it,  bend  it  to  his  requirements,  to  domes- 
ticate it,  if  we  may  so  word  it.     Many  countries  externally  better 

'  The  Russian  tundra  forms  a  belt  of  varying,  but  always  considerable, 
■width,  skirting  the  polar  sea  across  the  north  of  European  Russia  and  Sibe- 
ria, that  may  be  described  as  the  arctic  Prairies.  Only  in  lieu  of  tall, 
waving  grasses — clinging  lichens  on  low  rocky  knolls,  and  wet  mosses  that 
softly  yield  under  the  reindeer's  dainty  hoof,  cover  the  level  ground. 
Here  and  there  a  clump  of  the  dwarf  shrub-birch,  the  kind  that  does  not  rise, 
but  spreads,  crawling  on  the  ground  with  thin,  sapless,  serpentine  limbs, 
twisted  and  gnarled.  And  this  is  summer.  Nine  months  out  of  the  twelve 
this  comparative  variety  disappears  under  a  brittle  crust  of  frozen  snow,  which 
the  reindeer  finds  it  easy  to  break  with  short,  dry  raps  of  his  nervous  and 
vigorous  little  foot,  to  get  at  the  fodder  kept  fresh  and  juicy  beneath.  Lapp 
and  Esquimau  villages  are  sparsely  scattered  over  the  face  of  the  Siberian 
tundra,  with  their  relays  of  dogs  for  travelling. 
*  See  Appendix  to  Chapter  I. 


12       THE  EMPIRE   OF   THE    TSARS  AND   THE  RUSSIANS. 

endowed,  oflfer  to  civilization  a  less  secure  field.  There  is,  in  the 
New  World,  a  state  to  which  the  forests  and  savannahs  of  South- 
em  America  open  a  career  nearly  as  vast,  as  boundless  as  Russia. 
The  sun  of  the  tropics,  rivers  the  largest  on  our  globe,  the 
moisttu-e  brought  to  it  by  the  trade  winds,  give  to  its  vegetation 
and  animal  life,  in  all  their  forms,  a  matchless  vigor.  Its 
flora  and  fauna  rejoice  in  the  most  marvellous  variety  and 
vitality  ;  but  this  very  bounteousness  of  nature  is  hostile  to  man, 
who  knows  not  how  to  conquer  it.  Grasses  and  forests,  wild 
beasts  and  insects  alike  strive  with  him  for  the  possession  of 
Brazil.  Nature  there  is  too  rich,  too  independent  and  powerful,  to 
easily  accept  the  post  of  handmaiden,  and  even  when,  as  in  India, 
man  will  have  materially  mastered  the  soil,  he  will  still  be  in  dan- 
ger of  morally  bending  under  the  yoke,  enervated  by  the  climate, 
enslaved  by  deteriorating  influences. 

Not  such  is  Russia.  If  the  forests  cover  very  nearly  the  same 
area,  there  are  none  of  those  creepers,  of  those  beautifiil  parasites 
of  all  shapes  and  colors,  which  turn  tropical  forests  into  inextri- 
cable tangles.  Like  the  flora,  the  fauna,  too,  is  poor  for  so  vast  a 
land  ;  but  then  there  are  few  insects,  no  snakes,  no  wild  beasts,  if 
we  except  a  few  wolves  in  the  woods,  a  few  bears  in  the  wastes  of 
the  North.  Barring  the  great  deserts,  there  is,  perhaps,  not 
another  such  wide  expanse  on  the  face  of  the  earth  where  the 
manifestations  of  life  present  so  little  variety  and  so  little  power. 
Inanimate  nature  alone,  only  the  earth  is  great  in  size  ;  animate 
nature  is  puny,  not  abounding  in  species,  not  robust  in  its  births, 
quite  incapable  to  cope  with  man.  From  this  point  of  view,  of 
such  capital  importance  as  it  is,  Russia  is  as  European  as  any  part 
of  Europe.  The  land  is  docile,  easily  made  subservient.  Unlike 
the  most  magnificent  countries  of  both  hemispheres,  it  seems  made 
for  free  labor.  The  Russian  soil  does  not  require  the  toil  of  the 
slave ;  it  needs  neither  the  African  negro  nor  the  Chinese  coolee. 
It  does  not  wear  out  him  who  tends  it,  does  not  threaten  his  race 
with  degeneration,  it  gives  no  half-breeds.     Man  there  encounters 


NATURE,    CLIMATE,   AND   SOIL.  1 3 

only  two  obstacles— cold  and  space.  Cold,  wkich  is  less  difi&cult 
to  conquer  than  extreme  heat.  Space,  in  the  present  the  already 
half-tamed  foe  of  Russia,  and,  in  the  future,  her  greatest  ally. 


APPENDIX  TO  BOOK  I.,  CHAPTER  I.    (See  p.  ii,  note  3.) 

The  same  conclusion — practically  amounting  to  this  :  that  Russia  is  and 
ought  to  be  herself  and  not  somebody  else — is  arrived  at  by  Mr.  N.  Danilef- 
sky  in  his  remarkable  book,  Russia  and  Europe,  an  exhaustive  investiga- 
tion of  the  questions  implied  by  the  title  in  all  their  phases  and  bearings. 
He  contends,  however,  that  the  question,  "  Is  Russia  Europe  ?  "  does  not 
admit  of  a  categorical  answer,  inasmuch  as  the  question,  "  What  is  Europe  ?  " 
would  first  have  to  be  answered,  which  it  is  not  by  saying  it  is  "a  part  of 
the  world,"  since  the  division  of  the  world — especially  the  Old — is  purely 
arbitrary,  disjoining  regions  which  have  the  greatest  natural  affinity, 
such  as  the  south  of  Europe  and  Asia  Minor,  Lybia  and  Arabia, — and 
bracketing  others  which  having  nothing  in  common,  such  as  Central  Asia 
and  India  (with  the  Himalaya,  too,  between),  Italy  and  Norway,  Sahara  and 
the  Cape.  But  Africa  at  least  is  a  separate  continent,  almost  an  island ;  so 
are  America,  Australia.  But  Asia  and  Europe  are  essentially  one,  or  rather 
"Europe  is  only  the  peninsular  western  portion  of  Asia,  at  first  differing  from 
her  less  strikingly  than  her  other  peninsulas,  then  more  and  more,  as  it 
becomes  more  dismembered  and  attenuated."  Geographically,  then,  the 
question,  "  Is  Russia  Europe  ?  "  answers  itself:  it  is  and  it  is  not ;  it  is  in 
part.  How  much  ?  that  depends,  and  greatly,  on  personal  views.  But 
Europe  is  a  reality  after  all ;  it  represents  something  definite  :  "  Of  course 
it  does  !  Something  very  real  and  weighty.  For  Europe  is  not  a  geographi- 
cal, but  an  historical  and  cultural  term.  Europe  is  the  stage  of  the  Teutono- 
Roman  civilization,  neither  more  nor  less, — indeed  '  Europe '  is  that  civili- 
zation itself."  Not  by  any  means  a  "  universal  culture,"  for  no  such  is  pos- 
sible ;  nor  yet  the  old  Greco-Roman  culture,  which  had  its  roots  and  affinities 
in  Asia,  and  its  own  very  definite  area  :  the  shores  and  isles  of  the  Mediter- 
ranean basin,  Asiatic,  European,  and  African  alike,  thus  bringing  geography 
and  cultural  history  into  beautiful  agreement.  No.  Teutono-Roman 
culture  built  up  on  the  ruins  of  the  Greco-Roman,  and  on  another  stage; 
just  that  and  nothing  more.     But  that  is  a  great  deal.     Now  again  in  this 


14      THE  EMPIRE  OF  THE   TSARS  AND  THE  RUSSIANS. 

sense,  "  Is  Russia  Europe  ?  "  "To  the  questioner's  sorrow — or  pleasure,  for 
Russia's  woe — or  weal,  NO,"  answers  our  author.  "She  was  not  nourished 
on  one  of  those  roots  by  which  Europe  absorbed  the  wholesome  as  well  as 
the  baleful  saps  of  the  ancient  world  first  destroyed  by  her, — nor  on  those 
roots  which  brought  up  nutriment  from  the  depths  of  the  Teutonic  spirit" 
I  shall  have  to  refer  more  than  once  to  Mr,  Danilefsky's  book,  and  it  is  a 
pity  it  should  have  been  unknown  to  Mr.  Leroy-Beaulieu,  for  had  he  known 
of  it  he  could  not  have  ignored  it,  and  it  might  have  modified  some  of  the 
views  of  so  conscientious  an  inquirer. 


BOOK  I.     CHAPTER  II. 

The  Two  Great  Zones — The  Zone  of  Forests  and  the  Woodless  Zone — Sub- 
divisions of  the  Latter — The  Black  Mould  Zone — The  Steppe 
Region — Accidental  Steppes — Primeval  Steppes. 

Russia's  chief  characteristic  is  unity  in  immensity.  At  the  first 
glance,  while  comparing  the  ice-bound  tundras  of  the  North  to  the 
scorched  wastes  that  skirt  the  Caspian,  the  lakes  that  sleep  within 
their  granite  banks  in  Finland,  to  the  warm  terraced  slopes  of  the 
Crimean  shore,  one  is  struck  with  the  grandeur  of  these  contrasts. 
The  impression  conveyed  is  that  between  these  boundaries — 
between  Lapland,  the  reindeer's  domain,  and  the  Caspian  steppes, 
where  the  camel  is  at  home — lies  a  space  so  vast  as  to  need  many 
widely  differing  regions  to  fill  it  up.  Nothing  of  the  kind.  Rus- 
sia at  all  her  extremities,  even  where  she  touches  on  Europe, 
yields  specimens  of  all  the  climates.  Yet  the  territories  that  bear 
the  most  marked  aspects — Finland,  Caucasus,  Crimea — are  merely 
annexations,  natural  appendages,  though  greatly  differing  from 
Russia  proper.  In  the  interval,  between  the  projecting  spurs  of 
the  Karpathian  Mountains  and  the  Ural  chain,  there  spreads  a 
region  unmatched,  on  any  like  area,  for  similarity  of  climate  and 
sameness  of  nature's  aspects.  From  the  huge  Caucasian  bulwark  to 
the  Baltic,  this  empire,  surpassing  in  size  the  rest  of  Europe  put 
together,  really  offers  less  variety  than  western  countries,  owning 
an  area  ten  or  twelve  times  smaller.  This  comes  from  the  uni- 
formity of  the  plain-structure.  The  west  of  the  empire  is  more 
temperate,  more  European  ;  the  east  more  barren,  more  Asiatic ; 
the  north  is  colder,  the  south  warmer.     Yet,  the  south,  being  un- 

15 


lO      THE  EMPIRE   OF   THE    TSARS  AND   THE  RUSSIANS. 

protected  against  the  polar  winds,  cannot  differ  from  the  north, 
either  in  landscape  or  vegetation,  as  markedly,  abruptly  as  France 
from  Italy  or  Spain. 

At  the  same  time,  under  the  ftmdamental  unity  through  the 
homogeneousness  of  structure  and  climate,  Nature  has  stamped  sev- 
eral regions  with  singular  clearness  and  precision.  These  regions, 
offering  each  a  number  of  well  defined  special  characteristics,  split 
into  two  great  groups  or  zones  which,  between  them,  cover  the 
whole  of  European  Russia.  Both  equally  flat,  with  a  nearly 
equally  extreme  climate,  these  two  zones,  mutually  analogous  as 
they  are,  present  the  most  singular  contrast.  As  concerns  the 
soil,  vegetation,  moisture,  indeed  most  physical  and  economical 
conditions,  their  differences  amount  almost  to  complete  opposition. 
Setting  apart  the  uninhabitable  northern  extremity,  the  two  re- 
gions divide  the  empire  into  nearly  equal  halves,  cutting  through 
it  diagonally,  from  west  to  east,  and  both  cross  the  Ural,  project- 
ing their  prolongation  into  Asia.  One  is  the  region  of  forests  and 
peat-swamps,  the  other  is  the  woodless  zone  of  the  steppes. 

From  the  opposition  of  these  two  zones,  from  the  natural  anti- 
thesis of  steppe  and  forest,  has  proceeded  the  historical  antagonism, 
the  strife  of  many  centuries,  which  has  divided  the  two  halves  of 
Russia, — the  warfare  between  the  sedentary  North  and  nomadic 
South,  between  Russian  and  Tatar,  and,  later  on,  between  the 
Moscovite  state,  founded  in  the  heart  of  the  forest-region,  and  the 
sons  of  the  steppes,  the  free  Cosacks.* 

The  forest  zone,  although  steadily  reduced  by  excessive  cutting, 
still  remains  the  vaster  of  the  two.  Taking  in  all  the  north  and 
centre,  it  goes  tapering  from  west  to  east,  from  Kief  to  Kazin. 

At  the  northern  extremity  beyond  the  polar  circle,  as  on  the 
summits  of  high  mountains,  no  tree  can  withstand  the  intensity 

'  In  the  case  of  this  name  as  of  most  others,  mispronunciation  in  the 
month  of  foreigners  led  to  mis-spelling.  The  "  free  sons  of  the  steppes  "  are 
named  Kazclk,  a  form  much  easier  to  eye  and  tongue  than  the  faulty,  gen- 
erally accepted  Cossack.  But  any  correction  of  the  kind  is  apt  to  bewilder 
foreigners,  and  is  therefore,  as  a  mle,  to  be  avoided. 


NATURE,    CLIMATE,   AND   SOIL.  1/ 

and  permanency  of  the  frost.  On  both  sides  of  the  Ural  there  is 
nothing  but  the  tundras,  vast  and  dreary  wastes,  where  the  earth, 
permanently  hardened  by  frost,  is  clothed  with  moss.  In  these 
latitudes  no  culture  is  possible  ;  there  is  no  pasture  but  lichens,  no 
cattle  but  the  reindeer,  who  knows  no  home  but  these  arctic  re- 
gions. Hunting  and  fishing  are  the  only  pursuits  of  the  inhabi- 
tants, few  and  far  between,  of  these  ice-bound  tracts. 

The  forests  begin  about  the  65th  or  66th  degree  of  northern  lat- 
itude, the  atmosphere  being  slightly  warmed  by  the  neighborhood 
of  the  Atlantic  and  the  deep  gash  cut  into  the  shore  by  the  White 
Sea.  From  here  the  forests,  interspersed  with  boggy  clearings, 
descend  beyond  Moscow,  as  low  down  as  Kief.  From  north  to 
south,  the  kinds  of  trees  succeed  one  another  much  in  the  same 
order  as  in  the  Alps  from  summit  to  base.  The  fir  and  larch 
come  first,  then  the  forest  pine  and  the  birch.  The  birch,  the 
pine  and  the  fir,  the  three  trees  most  common  in  Russia,  mingle 
with  the  wniow  and  the  aspen.  Further  southward  grow  the 
linden,  the  maple,  the  elm,  and  towards  the  centre  the  oak  at  last 
makes  its  appearance.  There  are  in  these  regions,  especially  in 
the  northeast,  immense  forests  virtually  primeval  from  lack  of 
thoroughfares,  but  they  are  sparse,  rambling,  broken  up  by  large 
fallow  tracts,  where  nothing  grows  but  meagre  brushwood. 

The  soil  that  bears  the  greatest  portion  of  these  forests,  at  least 
in  the  northwest,  from  the  White  Sea  to  the  Ni^men  and  the 
Dniepr,^  is  a  low  plain,  spongy  and  abounding  in  peat,  intersected 
with  arid  banks  of  sand.  The  highest  tableland,  the  Valday  Moun- 
tains," scarcely  reaches  1,000  feet.     This  region  aboimds  in  water 

'  Consonants  preceding  the  n  in  the  beginning  of  a  word  or  syllable  in 
Russian  -words  and  names  should  be  clearly  sounded.  Thus  "Dniepr" 
must  not  be  read  "  Niepr,"  or  "  Dniestr  "  "  Niestr,^^  but  "  D-niep-er"  and 

*  The  short  or  truncated  y  with  which  so  many  Russian  words  and  names 
end,  and  which  will  be  rendered  by  y,  always  follows  a  vowel  and  offers  no 
difficulty  in  the  pronunciation,  being  exactly  similar  to  the  same  sound  in 
the  English,  "toy,"  "boy  "  (ex.:  Tolstdy).  The  difference  is  that  in  Russian 
it  is  combined  not  with  o  alone,  but  with  all  other  vowels.     And  here  it 


1 8       THE  EMPIRE   OF   THE    TSARS  AND   THE  RUSSIANS. 

and  springs  ;  here  lies  the  starting-point  of  all  the  great  rivers, 
the  chief  tributaries  of  Russia's  four  seas.  The  little  relief  of  the 
soil  frequently  robs  the  various  streams  of  a  clearly  defined  water- 
shed. No  ridge  separates  the  basins,  and  at  thaw-time  the 
future  tributaries  of  the  various  seas  sometimes  get  mixed  and 
produce  huge  swamps.  On  a  very  slightly  inclined  soil  the  rivers' 
course  is  sluggish  and  hesitating ;  the  waters,  ignoring  the  un- 
certain slope,  lose  themselves  in  endless  marshes,  or  flow  together 
into  numberless  lakes,  some  of  which  form  immense  expanses,  like 
the  Ladoga,  a  real  little  inland  sea,  while  the  vast  majority  resolve 
themselves  into  miserable  ponds,  like  the  eleven  hundred  lakes  of 
the  government  of  Arkhangelsk. 

All  over  this  zone  winter,  whose  sway  lasts  through  half  the 
year,  leaves  littie  room  for  vegetation  and  culture.  The  earth  fre- 
quentiy  lies  over  two  hundred  days  under  snow  ;  the  rivers  do  not 
cast  off  their  icy  fetters  until  May  or  the  end  of  April.  But  for 
the  impetuous  northern  spring,  which  carries  all  before  it,  and  at 
whose  touch  vegetation  springs  into  life  as  by  a  sudden  explosion, 
tilling  the  ground  would  be  simply  useless.  Barley  and  rye 
are  the  only  cereals  that  will  thrive  in  that  stingy  soil.  Wheat  is 
seldom  raised  and  does  not  pay  ;  flax  and  buckwheat  are  the  only 
plants  that  really  prosper  under  that  severe  sky.  The  soil, 
indeed,  in  all  this  region  does  not  provide  sufficient  food  for  the 
population,  which,  dispersed  though  it  be  over  vast  tracts,  and 
never  averaging  over  fifl;een  to  the  square  mile,  and  frequentiy 
faUing  below  even  this  figure,  can  never  force  fi-om  the  soil  a 
sufficiency  of  bread.  Small  crafts  have  to  eke  out  the  livelihood 
refiised  by  agriculture.  Sparse  as  it  is,  the  population  of  these 
poverty-stricken  countries  increases  but  imperceptibly  ;  it  has,  so 
to  speak,  reached  the  point  of  saturation.  From  this  whole 
northern  half  of  her  European  territory,  Russia  can  hope  for  some 

should  be  remembered  that  the  Russian  vowels  have  the  same  value  as  in 
all  European  lauguages  except  English  :  a  like  a  in  far,  star ;  e  like  e  in 
grey,  or  the  letter  "a  "/  i  like  ee  in  eel,  or  i  in  bit,  whip ;  u  like  oo  in  6oor, 
moor  (not  door  KtiiS.  floor). 


NATURE,    CLIMATE,   AND   SOIL.  1 9 

increase  of  population  and  national  wealth  only  by  favoring  indus- 
trial pursuits,  which  flourish  especially  in  the  region  of  Moscow 
and  that  of  the  Ural.  * 

Very  difierent  as  regards  promise  for  the  future  is  the  woodless 
zone — the  most  peculiar,  un-European  of  all.  Originally  less  ex- 
tensive than  the  forest  zone,  it  is  constantly  gaining  ground  in 
consequence  of  reckless  tree-felling,  a  proceeding  which  by  de-* 
priving  the  earth  of  moisture  and  shelter  makes  the  climate  even 
worse  than  it  naturally  is.  Stretching  over  the  whole  south,  it 
broadens  from  west  to  east,  crosses  the  Ural  and  extends  far  into 
the  desert  waste  of  Asia.  This  zone  is  flatter  still  than  the  forest- 
bearing  one  ;  on  an  area  several  times  the  size  of  France  it  cannot 
show  one  hill  350  feet  in  height.  In  the  west  the  Karpathians 
throw  out  a  spur  of  granite  rock  which  turns  off  the  course  of 
rivers,  some  of  which,  like  the  Dniepr,  it  encumbers  with  falls,  with- 
out the  aspect  of  the  country  around  being  in  the  least  altered. 
Now  it  stretches  into  undulating  plains,  now  again  relapses  into 
the  horizontal  monotony  of  the  sea  in  repose.  At  times  it  slowly 
grades  down  towards  the  Black  Sea  and  the  Caspian  ;  at  others 
it  lapses  abruptly  in  tiers  or  terraces  of  imeven  height,  but  all 
equally  flat.  There  is  no  boundary  to  these  viewless  expanses,  save 
the  horizon  line,  into  which  they  hazily  merge.  Not  the  slightest 
swelling,  save  in  certain  parts  innumerable  small  artificial  knolls, 
known  under  the  name  of  ^'  kurgans''  (mounds),  or  "  moghili^^ 
(tombs),  rounded  in  shape,  from  twenty  to  forty  or  fifty  feet  in 
height,  at  times  apparently  disposed  in  regular  lines,  as  though 
to  mark  a  road  through  these  wastes — they  are  tombs  of  extinct 
peoples,  or  landmarks  along  obliterated  highways,  from  the  tops 
of  which  the  herdsman  of  the  steppes  can  survey  his  flock  at  a 
distance.* 

*  See  Appendix  to  Chapter  II.,  No.  i. 

*  Such  kurgcLns  or  moghili  are  met  with  in  the  north,  in  Siberia  as 
well  as  in  Russia.  Numerous  diggings  made  within  the  last  few  years 
leave  no  doubt  whatever  concerning  their  destination. 


20      THE  EMPIRE   OF  THE    TSARS  AND   THE  RUSSIANS. 

No  mountains,  no  valleys.  The  rivers  skirting  the  outline  of 
the  above  mentioned  terraces  mostly  flow  along  at  the  foot  of  a 
sort  of  downs,  which,  however,  in  obedience  to  a  general  law, 
accompany  the  course  of  the  rivers, — the  Don,  the  Dniepr,  the 
Volga — and  are,  as  a  rule,  nothing  more  than  the  supports  of  a 
higher  tier,  and  just  as  even,  just  as  flat  on  the  top  as  the  low  plains 
on  the  opposite  bank,  which  the  overflow  of  the  river  in  spring 
converts  into  a  marsh.  The  small  rivers  and  rivulets  bom  of  the 
thaw  dig  their  beds  in  the  ground,  but  do  not  form  valleys  any 
more  than  the  great  rivers  do.  They  usually  roll  along  in  deep 
ditches,  fissures,  or  ravines,  with  abrupt  banks,  under  which 
villages  seek  shelter  from  the  winds  that  sweep  the  plains. 

The  absence  of  trees  is  the  distinctive  feature  of  this  entire  zone. 
In  the  northern  portion  of  it,  that  is  undoubtedly  brought  about 
by  man's  own  hand,  often  quite  recently,  or  even  in  our  own  time. 
Farther  southwards,  on  the  contrary,  in  the  steppes  properly  so 
called,  nature  alone  seems  responsible.  Soil  and  climate,  and, 
above  all,  lack  of  water  and  of  shelter,  are  the  causes  of  these 
steppes  being  entirely  bare  of  trees.  Such  few  as  do  spontane- 
ously grow  there  keep  to  the  ravines,  which,  at  the  proper  season, 
become  beds  for  the  rivulets.  The  plain  is  frequently  covered 
with  a  layer  of  fertile  earth,  somewhat  too  loose,  and  certainly  too 
exposed  to  every  wind  that  blows  for  trees  to  take  root  there, 
while  the  subsoil,  being  generally  chalky,  does  not  favor  the 
growth  of  forests.  In  other  parts,  again,  we  find  the  soil  too 
much  impregnated  with  saline  substances,  where  nothing  grows 
but  meagre  tufts  of  grass.  It  is  drought  which  everywhere  im- 
pedes the  growth  of  woods,  while,  on  the  other  hand,  the  want  of 
woods  increases  the  drought ;  so  we  find  ourselves  moving  in 
a  circle  fi-om  which  there  is  no  escape. 

This  region,  then,  through  which  course  the  greatest  rivers  of 
Europe,  suffers  from  want  of  water.  Heaven  grudges  it  rain, 
earth  grudges  it  springs.  This  evil  goes  on  growing  from  north 
to  south,  from  west  to  east.     The  rainfalls,  jfrequently  separated  by 


NATURE,    CLIMATE,   AND   SOIL.  21 

long  intervals  and  always  irregular,  at  least  as  to  quantity,  come 
only  in  spring  and  in  autumn.  All  through  summer  the  denuded 
earth,  parched  by  such  a  sun  as  Asia  knows,  yields  up  all  her  moist- 
ure to  an  atmosphere  which  in  no  shape  returns  it,  for  the  clouds 
keep  at  an  elevation  which  does  not  allow  of  their  condensing  into 
water.  In  certain  districts  of  the  farthest  south  such  a  thing  as 
a  whole  year,  nay,  eighteen  months,  without  a  drop  of  rain,  is  not 
unknown.  The  penury  of  water  in  summer  is  often  such  that  in 
many  villages  the  peasants,  lacking  spring  or  brook,  are  reduced 
to  drink  the  liquid  mud  of  the  blackish  pools  wherein  they  have 
tried  to  keep  the  spring  waters. 

This  southern  zone,  too,  which  would  seem  entitled  to  a  more 
temperate  climate,  is,  on  the  contrary,  the  very  home  of  abrupt 
contrasts.  It  passes,  within  the  year,  through  arctic  cold  and  all 
but  tropical  heat,  swayed  by  turns  by  the  atmospheric  influences 
of  Siberia  and  Central  Asia,  the  icy  wastes  of  the  north  and  the 
sandy  wastes  of  the  southeast.  Under  the  latitude  of  Paris  and 
Vienna,  the  countries  north  of  the  Black  and  Caspian  Seas  have 
in  January  the  temperature  of  Stockholm,  in  July  that  of  Madeira. 
Two  extreme  seasons,  with  next  to  no  transition,  scarcely  a  few 
weeks  of  spring  and  of  autumn.  In  this  southern  zone  the  winters 
are  shorter  than  in  the  north,  but  scarcely  less  severe.  The 
vicinity  of  Siberia  and  Central  Asia  robs  the  Caspian  of  the  prop- 
erty usually  belonging  to  vast  sheets  of  water,  that  of  moderating 
the  temperature.  Along  the  shores  of  this  continental  sea,  almost 
at  the  foot  of  the  Caucasus  (44°  northern  latitude,  which  is  that 
of  the  south  of  France),  the  thermometer  descends  to  30°  below 
freezing  point  (Centigrade),*  while  in  summer  it  rises  to  40°  above. 
On  the  confines  of  Asia,  in  the  parched  Kirghiz  steppes,  i.  e.^ 
under  the  latitude  of  Central  France,  the  mercury  at  times  con- 
geals and  remains  congealed  through  several  days,  while  in  July 
the  thermometer  may  burst  in  the  sun.     It  is  in  the  interior  of 

*The  temperature  is  given  throughout  according  to  the  Centigrade 
measurement. 


22       THE  EMPIRE   OF   THE    TSARS  AND   THE   RUSSIANS. 

the  continent,  in  Siberia  and  Turkestan,  that  these  excessive  tem- 
peratures attain  their  maximum.  Round  about  the  Aral  the 
difference  between  the  greatest  cold  and  the  greatest  heat  amounts 
to  80°  and  even  to  90°,  so  that  the  Russian  troops  in  their  expedi- 
tions to  Central  Asia  have  had  to  face  by  turns  the  extremes  of  both 
winter  and  summer.  Even  to  the  north  of  the  Black  and  Azof 
Seas  the  seasons  are  markedly  exaggerated.  There  also  the  dif- 
ference between  the  hottest  and  coldest  day  of  the  year  sometimes 
exceeds  70°.  The  Crimean  peninsula  itself,  though  bathed  by 
two  seas,  does  not  escape  these  terrible  contrasts. 

These  extremes  of  temperature  are  among  the  obstacles  that 
civilized  life  has  to  battle  with  in  Russia,  but  they  nowhere 
amount  to  an  insurmountable  barrier.  It  should  not  be  forgotten 
that  of  all  the  privileges  enjoyed  by  Western  Europe  her  temperate 
climate  is  the  one  most  rarely  fotmd  even  in  the  finest  of  her  colo- 
nies. The  other  continents  frequently,  and  from  analogous  causes, 
labor  under  the  same  disadvantages  as  Russia.  The  climate  of 
the  Northern  States  of  the  North  American  Union  greatly  resem- 
bles in  this  respect  the  south  of  Russia  ;  the  most  populous  States, 
those  of  New  England,  New  York,  Pennsylvania,  pass  through 
very  nearly  the  same  extremes  of  temperature  as  the  steppes  of 
the  Black  Sea. 

If  denuded  of  trees,  Southern  Russia  is  far  firom  lacking  vegeta- 
tion. Over  a  great  portion  of  this  vast  territory  the  richness  of 
the  soil  makes  up  for  the  scantiness  of  water,  and  in  such  places 
as  do  not  suffer  from  too  hostile  atmospherical  conditions  its  fer- 
tility is  really  marvellous.  As  concerns  soil,  cultivation,  and 
population,  the  woodless  zone  naturally  falls  into  three  different 
regions,  into  three  strips  or  bands,  which  tend  firom  northeast  to 
southwest.  They  are  :  the  region  of  Black  Mould,  that  of  fertile 
steppe  land,  and  that  of  sandy  or  saline  steppes. 

The  Black  Mould  belt,  one  of  the  most  fertile  as  well  as  most 
extensive  arable  plains  on  the  globe,  occupies  the  upper  part  of 
the  woodless  zone,  immediately  below  the  zone  of  forests  and 


NATURE,    CL/MATE,  AND  SOIL.  23 

lakes.  Deriving  still  some  moisture  and  shelter  from  the  latter, 
the  Black  Mould  region  is  placed  in  much  less  unfavorable  climatic 
conditions  than  is  the  steppe  region  of  the  farthest  south.  It  owes 
its  name  (Jchemozibm)  to  a  layer  of  blackish  humus,  varying 
in  thickness  from,  on  the  average,  one  foot  and  a  half  to  five. 
This  mould  consists  chiefly  of  loam,  and,  in  lesser  proportion,  of 
oily  clay  mixed  with  organic  matters.  It  dries  up  rapidly  and 
becomes  pulverized  in  the  process  ;  but  it  becomes,  with  equal 
rapidity,  impregnated  with  moisture,  and,  tmder  the  action  of 
rain,  returns  to  its  original  condition  of  a  sort  of  dough  as  black 
as  coal.  The  formation  of  this  layer  of  wonderfiil  fertility  is 
attributed  to  the  slow  decomposition  of  the  steppe  grasses,  accu- 
mulated in  the  course  of  many  ages. 

The  tchemoziom  stretches  in  one  long  band  across  the  whole 
of  European  Russia.  Starting  from  the  provinces  of  Podolia 
and  Kief  in  the  southwest,  it  ascends  towards  the  northeast  to 
Kaz^  and  beyond ;  after  the  break  occasioned  by  the  Ural,  it 
reappears  in  Siberia,  in  the  southern  part  of  the  government  of 
Tobolsk.  On  its  upper  edge,  the  tchemoziom  still  shows  some 
woods.  As  we  advance  towards  the  south,  these  woods  get 
sparse  and  stunted  in  size,  until  they  gradually  vanish.  In  the 
midst  of  boundless  plains,  the  last  clumps  of  oaks,  aspens,  or 
elms  look  like  small  islets  lost  in  space.  The  trees  grow  single, 
even  the  brushwood  disappears.  Nothing  remains  save  arable 
lands,  one  vast  plain  to  which  no  end  is  seen,  uniformly  stretching 
away  into  distance  for  hundreds  of  miles. 

Notwithstanding  its  faulty  cultivation,  by  means  of  rather 
primitive  implements,  this  region  together  with  the  Mississippi 
valley,  is  one  of  those  immense  storehouses  of  grain  which  bid 
our  modem  world  defy  any  famine.  The  fertility  of  this  soil, 
which  may  even  yet  be  called  new,  till  very  lately  seemed  inex- 
haustible, and  the  agricultiuist  has  long  had  reason  to  believe 
that  it  would  never  need  manure  or  any  fertilizer.  Just  now, 
however,  it  is  not  only  conceded  that  this  fertility  should  be 


24      THE  EMPIRE   OF   THE    TSARS  AND   THE  RUSSIANS. 

entertained  artificially,  but  there  already  are  complaints  about 
exhaustion,  and  experts  foretell  that,  unless  there  is  a  change  of 
method,  ignorance  will  have  achieved  the  feat  of  ruining  the  richest 
soil  in  all  the  world.'  This  part  of  Russia,  as  a  consequence  of  its 
fertility,  is  the  most  populous.  On  an  average  it  already  numbers 
from  sixty  to  sixty-five  inhabitants  to  the  square  mile,  and  in 
certain  western  portions  of  it,  over  seventj'^-five.  And  the  popu- 
lation increases  as  new  issues  are  opened  by  the  railways,  and  as 
agriculture  progresses  in  its  conquest  of  the  neighboring  steppes. 

Between  the  ichemozibm  and  the  southern  seas  lie  the  steppes 
properly  so  called,  as  distinct  from  the  Black  Mould  fields,  which 
are  frequently  so  designated,  so  that  at  last  any  treeless  plain 
comes  under  that  name.  It  is  in  these  steppes  that  the  flatness 
of  the  soil,  the  absence  of  all  tree-vegetation,  and  the  summer 
droughts  reach  their  maximum.  Slightly  inclined  towards  the 
Black,  Azof,  and  Caspian  Seas,  they  take  in  the  lower  basins  of 
the  Dniepr  and  the  Don,  the  Volga  and  the  Ural.  I^ft  to  itself, 
with  little  or  no  cultivation,  the  steppe  is  a  desert  plain,  without 
trees,  or  shade,  or  water.  For  days  and  days  the  traveller  looks 
in  vain  for  a  shrub,  a  hut ;  still  it  is  not  always  the  barren  waste 
for  which  the  word  stands  in  the  Western  mind.  These  immense 
tracts,  covering  in  European  Russia  alone  over  half  a  million 
square  miles,  include  lands  of  very  different  qualities,  which, 
therefore,  notwithstanding  a  certain  outward  likeness,  are  called 
to  widely  different  uses  in  the  future.  Steppes  are  of  two  kinds, 
two  types  clearly  defined :  the  steppe  with  productive  soil,  not 
unlike  the  tchemozi'dm,  and  the  steppe  made  up  of  sand,  stone, 
and  salt.  The  former,  much  the  most  extensive  in  European 
Russia,  are  ready  for  cultivation  and  full  of  rich  promise  ;  the 
latter,  apparently,  will  ever  be  unfit  for  it.  The  former  are 
steppes  only  accidentally,  owing  to  the  absence  or  scarcity  of 
man.     The  latter  are  everlasting  steppes,  by  nature's  own  decree. 

The  fertile  steppes  fill  the  greater  portion  of  the  space  that 

*See  Appendix  to  Chapter  II.,  No.  2. 


NATURE,    CLIMATE,   AND  SOIL.  2$ 

lies  between  the  tchernozibm,  of  which  they  are  a  continuation, 
and  the  Black  and  Azof  Seas.  They  include  the  lower  course  of 
all  the  rivers  that  flow  into  those  two  seas,  from  the  Dniestr  and 
Bug  to  the  Don  and  Kub^n  ;  they  stop  a  long  way  short  of  the 
delta  of  the  Volga,  but  turn  up  towards  the  northeast,  where 
they  spread  between  the  great  river  and  the  southern  spurs  of  the 
Ural  chain.  The  subsoil  generally  consists  of  a  layer  of  vege- 
table humus,  identical  with  that  of  the  Black  Mould  belt.  I^eft 
to  themselves,  these  steppes  bear  splendid  witness  to  their  natural 
fertility,  in  the  shape,  not  of  forests,  but  of  a  gorgeous  garment 
of  grass  and  flowers  all  their  own,  so  they  have  nothing  to  envy 
the  richest  forests.  Such  a  steppe  is  to  be  likened  not  to  an 
African  desert,  but  to  an  American  prairie.  The  exuberance  of 
life  shown  there  by  nature  is  marvellous.  The  grass  shoots  up  to 
a  height  of  five  or  six  feet,  even  higher  in  rainy  years.  Well 
may  the  legends  of  Ukraina  tell  how  the  Cosacks,  in  their  venture- 
some expeditions,  used  to  hide  in  the  grass-thickets,  horse  and 
all.  This  excessive  vigor  of  grass-vegetation  may  be  accounted 
as  one  among  the  causes  of  the  lack  of  woods  :  the  tall  grass,  in 
its  rapid  growth,  would  smother  young  saplings.  It  is,  however, 
not  the  gramineous  tribe,  or  grass  properly  so  called,  that  yields 
the  bulk  of  steppe- vegetation,  nor  do  they  lend  it  that  look  of 
vigor ;  the  steppe  owes  those  to  other  and  taller  plants — umbel- 
liferous, leguminous,  labiate,  composite — which  abound  in  spring- 
time, and  whose  blossoms  clothe  it  with  a  thousand  colors.  The 
species,  too,  are  few,  just  as  in  the  north  the  forests  offer  no 
great  variety.  They  are  mainly  of  the  so-called  "  social  "  species, 
growing  in  large  patches,  and  mostly  annual  plants,  as  others  find 
it  rather  hard  to  weather  a  climate  which  combines  Baltic  winters 
with  Mediterranean  summers.  Besides,  the  steppes  are  not  wholly 
wanting  in  ligneous  plants  :  a  few  shrubs  are  to  be  met  with, 
trees  even  occasionally,  though  small  and  stunted  ;  among  others, 
the  wild  pear,  which  the  Cosack  ballads  have  made  the  emblem 
of  slighted  love. 


26      THE  EMPIRE   OF   THE    TSARS  AND   THE  RUSSIANS. 

During  the  brief  spring  of  this  region,  the  vegetation  of  the 
steppes,  like  that  of  Northern  Russia,  unfolds  with  prodigious 
rapidity.  The  spring  rains  supply  it  the  wherewithal  to  resist 
the  intense  summer  heat ;  but  if  the  rains  fail  to  arrive  in  time, 
it  fails  too,  a  victim  to  drought.  In  certain  districts,  or  certain 
years,  ail  this  gorgeousness  lasts  only  a  few  weeks :  in  July  all  is 
gone, — wilted,  parched.  The  blaze  of  the  sun,  untempered  by 
shade,  scorches  everything,  and  the  tall  plants,  which  converted 
the  steppe  into  an  ocean  of  verdure,  now  raise  their  bare  stalks, 
spikelike  and  ghastly  ;  the  steppe  is  transformed  into  a  dried  up 
patnpa,  yet,  even  in  this  shape,  this  once  beautiful  wealth  of 
vegetation  is  not  wasted.  These  grasses,  scorched  by  the  sun  in 
the  fulness  of  their  ripeness,  yield  to  the  flocks  a  sort  of  naturally 
cured  hay,  on  which  they  feed  through  the  rest  of  the  season. 
Each  year  the  entire  vegetation  disappears  at  the  approach  of 
winter  :  whatever  has  survived  the  sun,  perishes  under  the  snow. 

This  primeval  steppe  with  its  spontaneous  wealth  of  flowers, 
the  steppe  of  history  and  the  poets,  gets  narrowed  every  year, 
and  will  soon  vanish  before  the  encroachments  of  agriculture. 
The  Ukraina  of  the  Cosacks  and  Mazeppa,  with  all  her  legends, 
has  already  lost  her  wild  beauty.  The  plough  lords  it  over  her  ; 
the  wilderness  where  Charles  XII.  and  his  army  could  lose 
themselves,  is  now  under  regular  cultivation.  Gbgol's  steppe, 
like  Cooper's  prairie,  will  soon  be  a  memory ;  it  will  join  the 
confining  tchemozibm.  It  is  difl&cult  to  draw  an  exact  boun- 
dary line  between  the  two  zones,  one  of  which  is  steadily  increas- 
ing at  the  expense  of  the  other,  and  must  end  by  absorbing  it 
altogether.  For  the  causes  of  so  unequal  a  development  we  must 
question  history  as  much  as  nature.  For  hundreds  and  thousands 
of  years,  these  steppes  have  been  the  great  thoroughfare  followed 
by  all  the  migrations  from  Asia  into  Europe  ;  as  lately  as  the  end 
of  the  eighteenth  century  they  were  exposed  to  the  inroads  of 
nomadic  tribes  from  Crimea,  the  Caucasus,  and  the  lower  Volga. 
But  for  the  submission  of  the  Crimean  Tatars,  the  Nogays  that 


NATURE,    CLIMATE,  AND   SOIL.  27 

dwell  on  the  shores  of  the  Azof  Sea,  and  the  Kirghiz  of  the  Caspian 
region,  these  steppes  never  could  have  been  opened  to  agricul- 
ture, under  whose  yoke  they  will  soon  have  completely  passed, 
thus  becoming  assimilated  to  the  Black  Mould  territory  of  which 
they  have  for  centuries  been  the  neglected  prolongation. 

Two  things,  besides  the  scarcity  of  working-hands,  have 
delayed  the  breaking  of  these  grassy  steppes, — two  things  partly 
connected  with  each  other  :  drought  and  want  of  wood.  Against 
drought  it  is  difl&cult  to  find  a  remedy  ;  from  lack  of  water,  the 
most  fertile  of  these  plains  will  always  be  exposed  to  an  alterna- 
tion of  good  and  bad  years.  Hence  frequently  recurring  dearth, 
sometimes  actual  famine,  in  provinces  which,  at  other  times, 
might  be  regarded  as  the  granaries  of  the  empire. 

The  want  of  trees  is  perhaps  a  greater  drawback  still  to  the 
inhabitants,  whom  it  affects  in  twofold  guise — lack  of  fuel  and 
building  materials,  since  stone  also  is  not  to  be  had  most  of  the 
time.  For  cooking  and  heating  they  have  nothing  but  the  dry 
stalks  of  the  tall  steppe-grasses  and  the  dung  of  the  flocks,  of  which 
they  rob  the  soil.  Such  resources  cannot  suffice  a  population  at 
all  dense ;  but  the  opening  of  roads  and  railways,  of  coal  and 
anthracite  mines,  will  gradually  remedy  these  discomforts,  by 
bringing  in  wood  or  substitutes  for  wood  and  restoring  the  manure 
to  its  proper  agricultural  uses.  One  great  advantage  these  steppes 
possess  in  their  geographical  position  :  the  vicinity  of  the  g^eat 
rivers'  estuaries  and  of  the  Black  Sea  opens  out  to  them  the 
greatest  facilities  for  trade  with  Europe.  It  is  the  only  region  in 
the  empire  that  has  access  to  a  sea  free  from  ice  at  all  seasons.  * 

Between  the  arable  steppe  and  the  tchernoztdm  proper,  the 
mode  of  culture  and  the  density  of  the  population  are  the  only 

*  Mr.  Beaulieu  forgets  the  Baltic  provinces,  which  jHjssess  a  first-class 
harbor,  Libava  (Germanized  into  Liebau),  which  never  freezes,  on  a  deep 
gulf  of  the  Baltic,  open  to  navigation  all  the  year  round.  The  immense 
importance  of  this  fact  to  commerce  secures  to  Liebau  a  great  future,  of  a 
different  kind  of  greatness  from  that  of  Cronstadt  of  course,  which  owes 
more  than  half  its  glory  to  its  military  qualities. 


28       THE  EMPIRE   OF   THE    TSARS  AND   THE  RUSSIANS. 

distinctions  to  be  drawn  with  any  degree  of  accuracy.  In  the 
steppe  the  poptdation  is  scant,  the  culture  still  nomadic.  With 
only  35  or  36  inhabitants  to  the  square  mile,  the  culture  by 
triennial  rotation — the  farming  system  in  general  use  all  over  the 
Black  Mould  region — must  soon  prevail.  Thus  the  annexation  of 
the  steppe  to  the  tchemozibm  is  eflFected  easily,  without  hurt  to 
anybody,  without  martyrs  to  civilization.  The  fertile  steppe, 
covering  300,000  or  400,000  square  miles,  is  still  nearly  as  extensive 
as  the  Black  Mould  region  now  under  regular  cultivation.  In 
the  near  future  both  will  form  one  agricultural  region,  occupying, 
in  Europe  alone,  from  600,000  to  800,000  square  miles,  about  double 
the  total  area  of  France.  The  American  prairie,  which  is  passing 
through  analogous  phases,  will  probably  be  the  only  cereal-bearing 
country  that  may  outdo  it,  and  if  its  development  is  more  rapid, 
it  will  be  owing  to  the  abundance  of  capital  and  to  European 
immigration.* 

South  and  east  of  the  fertile  steppe  come  the  barren  steppes, 
forever  unapt  for  cultivation.  No  vegetable  layer  there — nothing 
but  sand,  or  a  soil  impregnated  with  salt,  still  more  for- 
bidding.    Such  is  the  vast  Uralo-Caspian  depression,  the  bottom 

'  Sheep-breeding  is  carried  on  in  the  south  of  Russia  on  nearly  as  large 
a  scale  as  in  Australia  or  New  Zealand.  It  is  a  pity,  for  that  is  the  resource 
of  tracts  that  are  not  good  for  much  else.  But  while  the  hands  that  should 
put  them  to  their  proper  use  are  not  forthcoming — kept  busy,  most  of  them, 
in  the  north  scratching  the  earth  for  a  sustenance  which,  less  fortunate 
than  the  barnyard  fowls,  they  do  not  obtain  from  it, — this  immense  region 
must  be  made  to  yield  income  of  some  sort.  But  unless  this  makeshift 
industry  soon  yields  the  place  to  the  legitimate  one  of  agriculture,  there 
may  be  danger  of  that  gorgeous  wheatland  permanently  deteriorating.  The 
huge  tracts  of  plain  and  hill-land  on  the  east  side  of  the  Adriatic  used  as 
sheep-walks  by  the  ancient  Roman  non-resident  landlords,  and  those  in  the 
south  of  Italy  which  continued  to  be  so  used  by  the  various  foreign  kings 
and  feudal  lords  down  to  almost  modern  times,  are  made  forever  unfit  for 
culture,  or  if  they  can  be  reclaimed  it  would  be  at  a  cost  which  well  justifies 
the  hesitations  of  closely  ciphering  financiers.  Sheep-breeding  is  the  surest 
and  quickest  mode  of  enriching  the  present  to  the  destruction  of  the  future, 
and  should  be  confined  to  unproductive,  poor-soiled  steppeland,  which  still 
grows  natural  fodder  of  a  quality  sufficient  for  that  most  easily  contented 
and  most  close-nibbling  of  browsers — the  sheep. 


NATURE,    CLIMATE,   AND   SOIL.  29 

of  a  sea  but  lately  desiccated,  where  the  evaporating  waters  have 
left  behind  a  deposit  of  salt,  and  which,  here  and  there,  is  still 
studded  with  small  salt  lakelets, — remnants  of  an  inland  sea  of 
old,  now  reduced  to  the  proportion  of  the  Caspian.  This  is  as 
genuine  a  desert  as  the  Sahara  itself,  with  but  few  oases.  Starting 
from  Tsaritsin,  on  the  lower  course  of  the  Volga,  which  they 
include,  these  salt  deserts  mingle  with  or  join  the  immense 
Kirghiz  steppe,  a  region  of  stone  and  sand,  and  stretch  on  and  on 
into  the  very  core  of  Turkestan.  Part  of  these  salt  steppes  lies 
below  the  level  of  the  sea,  and  the  Caspian  itself,  of  which  they 
were  once  the  bed,  lies  about  eighty-five  feet  below  the  surface 
of  the  Black  Sea. 

This  Uralo-Caspian  steppe  is,  of  all  European  Russia,  the 
driest,  most  denuded,  most  exposed  to  excessive  seasons.  It  is  a 
decidedly  Asiatic  country,  by  virtue  of  its  soil  and  climate,  by  its 
flora  and  fauna,  by  the  race  of  its  population  and  their  mode  of 
life.  If  there  is,  in  these  parts,  a  natural  boundary  line  between 
Europe  and  Asia,  it  should  be  sought  for,  not  in  the  Ural  River, 
(the  Yaik),  but  at  the  western  end  of  that  Caspian  hollow,  the 
prolongation  of  the  deserts  of  Central  Asia ;  around  the  point 
where  the  Don  and  the  Lower  Volga  come  nearest  each  other, 
though  art  has  not  yet  contrived  to  unite  them,  so  very  marked  is 
the  physical  boundary  of  the  two  regions. 

A  glance  at  the  other  side  of  the  Azof  Sea,  shows  us  the 
northern  half  of  Crimea  and  the  neighboring  shoreland,  that  lies 
between  the  Isthmus  of  Perekop  and  the  mouth  of  the  Dniepr, 
forming  a  little  region  of  itself,  scarcely  less  unfit  for  agriculture — 
a  bit  of  Asia  dropped  north  of  the  Black  Sea.  Here  the  sandy  and 
rocky  steppes  predominate.  Even  where  we  catch  a  glimpse  of 
vegetable  land,  the  scarcity  of  springs  and  rain  would  seem  to 
doom  to  sterility,  for  a  long  time  to  come,  this  upper  half  of  Tauris, 
of  which  such  great  things  were  expected  in  the  time  of  Catherine 
the  Great.  From  the  mountains  of  Southern  Crimea  and  the  coast 
of  the  Caspian  to  the  fertile  steppeland,  the  barren  steppeland, 


30      THE  EMPIRE   OF   THE    TSARS  AND   THE  RUSSIANS. 

this  side  of  the  Ural  River,  covers  nigh  on  300,000  square  miles 
which  cannot  show  as  much  as  a  million  and  a  half  of  population. 
On  all  this  area  it  seems  hopeless  to  attempt  growing  trees,  an 
operation  already  very  difficult  in  the  Black  Mould  region  and 
the  adjacent  fertile  steppes.  Unfit  for  agriculture,  indeed  for  life 
in  permanent  settlements,  these  vast  tracts,  like  the  neighboring 
pordons  of  Asia,  appear  to  be  good  for  nothing  but  cattle-raising 
and  nomadic  life.  Hence  these  are  the  only  regions  of  European 
Russia  still  held  by  Asiatic  tribes — Kalmyk  and  Kirghiz  and,  until 
quite  lately,  the  Crimean  Tatar  and  the  Nogay.  They  feel  as 
much  at  home  on  these  steppes  as  in  their  orig^al  Asiatic  homes. 
They  lead  the  same  life,  driving  their  flocks  to  pasture  on  the 
scant  grass  that  grows  on  sand,  and  the  meagre  plants  impreg- 
nated with  salt  which  stud  in  tufts  the  arid  soil. 

At  this  southeastern  extremity  of  European  Russia  we  meet 
with  the  same  mode  of  life  that  we  observe  in  the  extreme 
north,  amongst  the  Lapps  and  Samoy^ds:  a  nomadic  existence 
under  the  tent  made  of  hides,  only  substituting  the  camel  for  the 
reindeer.  But  then,  these  two  regions  are  the  least  populous  of 
the  entire  empire  this  side  of  the  Ural.  Including  the  numerous 
fishermen  on  the  Volga,  and  the  laborers  in  the  salt  works,  the 
steppes  of  the  southeast  cannot  show  an  average  of  six  people  to 
the  square  mile.  In  certain  portions  of  the  Kalmyk  steppe  in 
particular,  there  are  not  quite  two  inhabitants  to  the  square  mile. 
Not  until  we  reach  the  mouths  of  the  Dvina  in  the  government 
of  Arkhangelsk  do  we  find  another  as  scanty  population.  The 
northern  coast  of  the  Caspian  is  not  much  better  off  than  the  ice- 
bound coast  of  the  White  Sea,  nor  has  it  a  much  more  promising 
future  to  look  forward  to. 

This  review  would  be  incomplete  did  we  not  mention  one  more 
region,  less  extensive  and  but  lately  annexed,  which,  fi-om  its 
mountainous  soil  and  southern  climate,  holds  a  peculiar  position. 
This  region  comprises  the  Caucasus  and  the  southern  coast  of 
Crimea,  which,  with  its  abrupt  steeps,  is  merely  a  prolongation  of 


NATURE,    CLIMATE,   AND   SOIL.  3 1 

the  Caucasian  chain.  Nature,  which  nowhere  marked  out  a 
boundary  for  Russia,  neither  towards  Europe  nor  towards  Asia, 
appears  to  have  raised  at  least  one  very  efficient  barrier  in  this 
one  direction,  between  the  Black  and  Caspian  Seas.  What 
boundary  could  be  better  carried  out  than  this  ridge,  measuring 
from  14,000 to  18,000  feet  in  height,  towering  between  two  seas? 
It  is  as  though  another  Pyrenees  had  been  heaped  up  to  twice  the 
height  of  the  chain  that  separates  France  from  Spain.  And  yet 
this  barrier,  which  seemed  to  stand  athwart  Russia's  way,  has 
been  crossed.  Nature  herself,  indeed,  even  while  raising,  fur- 
nished the  means  to  defeat  it.  Thrown  across  an  isthmus,  be- 
tween two  inland  seas,  fated  to  be  subjected  to  Russian  influences, 
the  Caucasus,  in  the  logical  order  of  things,  had  to  be  entered 
from  both  sides,  and  could  not  but  easily  succumb  to  a  back- 
handed stroke  of  strategy.  This  bulwark  of  Asia  could  not  hold 
out  against  the  necessity  for  Russia  to  step  over  it  in  order  to 
reach  the  South,  that  everlasting  allurement  of  all  Northern  nations. 
The  Caucasus  and  the  southern  coast  of  Crimea  cannot  be 
accounted  a  new  region  of  the  Russian  soil, — Russian  nature  ends 
with  the  plain  ;  they  are  an  entirely  difierent  country,  as  varied  of 
aspect  as  the  regions  of  Russia  proper  are  monotonous.  There, 
on  the  steep  sides  of  the  mountains,  we  find  forests,  the  counter- 
part of  those  that  have  vanished  from  the  centre  of  the  empire 
downward,  not  meagre,  sparse,  and  monotonous  as  in  the  north, 
but  dense,  vigorous,  displaying  a  vegetative  power  unknown  to 
Moscovia  proper.  There,  too,  fruit-trees  thrive,  along  with  that 
variety  of  plants  and  culture  which  Russia  would  vainly  look  for 
on  her  plains,  from  the  shores  of  the  glacial  seas  to  those  of  the 
Euxine, — the  vine,  which  on  the  banks  of  the  Don  still  enjoys 
but  a  precarious  shelter,  the  mulberry,  the  olive-tree.  It  appears 
as  though  the  various  zones  of  culture  characterized  in  other 
countries  by  these  three  trees,  unite  into  one  on  the  slopes  of 
these  mountains,  as  though  to  compensate  Russia  for  the  monot- 
ony of  her  plains.     Few  are  the  varieties  of  fruit  not  acclimated 


32       THE  EMPIRE   OF   THE    TSARS  AND    THE  RUSSIANS. 

in  these  Crimean  hanging  gardens  suspended  above  the  sea,  or 
in  Transcaucasia,  where  Russian  merchants,  not  content  with 
having  succeeded  in  the  cultivation  of  cotton  and  sugar-cane,  are 
discussing  the  introduction  of  tea  plantations. 

APPENDIX  TO  BOOK  I.,  CHAPTER  II.— NO.  i.     (Seep.  19,  note 4.) 

The  misery  is  increased  and  made  wellnigh  hopeless  by  the  prohibition 
laid  on  the  peasants  to  leave  the  land  allotted  them  at  the  time  of  emancipa- 
tion. The  Emperor  Nicolas  took  pride  in  proclaiming  that  Russia  was  "an 
agricultural  country."  So  agriculture  was  "  encotu-aged "  at  the  expense 
of  everything  else,  and  the  fiction  was  kept  up  during  the  great  crisis  which 
was  to  decide  Russia's  economical  future.  The  unfortunate  peasants  of  the 
north,  while  nominally  set  free,  were  given  over  to  a  bondage  worse  than 
the  last.  An  intelligent  landlord  could  and  would  allow  numbers  of  his 
people,  for  a  moderate  yearly  payment,  to  go  to  any  place  where  they  could 
earn  a  good  living.  Now  they  were  made  bond-slaves,  not  to  men,  but  to  a 
soulless  thing,  a  soil  incapable  of  rewarding  their  most  assiduous  toil  with 
enough  of  mere  rye  alone  to  last  the  family  to  the  year's  end,  not  to  speak 
of  the  seed  grain  for  the  following  season.  So  they  were  burdened  over  and 
above  the  taxes,  with  a  considerable  purchase  sum  for  the  land  allotted 
them,  and  placed  in  the  impossibility  of  paying  either,  even  at  the  cost  of 
half-starvation  to  themselves,  by  being  "  fastened  "  to  a  soil  absolutely  unfit 
for  cultivation  under  any  conditions  whatever.  The  reason  given  is  that 
"had  they  their  will,  they  would  rush  down  en  masse  to  the  south,  south- 
west, and  southeast, — (which,  nota  bene,  are  as  good  as  uninhabited  !) — and 
the  north  would  become  a  waste."  As  if  that  argument  did  not  work  pre- 
cisely the  other  way:  will  people — and  such  conservative  people  as  the 
Russian  peasants — rush  away  from  their  homesteads  to  unknown  lands 
unless  they  have  nothing  left  to  lose  and  all  change  is  gain  ?  Whj',  that 
is  just  what  the  North  ought  to  be.  The  forests  should  be  nursed  back  to 
their  former  richness  and  re-stocked  with  the  wild  beasts  whose  extermina- 
tion has  robbed  the  country  of  a  real  and  bountifal  source  of  national 
wealth.  When  one  thinks  that  the  forests  about  Ndvgorod  and  Pskof,  all 
cut  up  by  streams  and  interspersed  with  lakes,  teemed  with  beavers  only  a 
century  and  a  half  ago  !  Then  the  whole  great  North  is  undermined  with 
ores — copper,  lead — so  rich  that  huge  lumps  of  pure  metal  crop  up  under 
the  plough  and  are  taken  to  cities  by  the  peasant- wives  along  with  their  flax 
or  eggs,  carefully  hidden  under  their  aprons,  and  sold  for  a  few  coins  with 


NATURE,    CLIMATE,   AND  SOIL.  33 

fear  and  trembling— for  it  is  forbidden  to  take  notice  of  such  things,  as  they 
might  be  to  the  prejudice  of  the  administration  pet — agriculture  !  Besides, 
the  share  demanded  by  the  exchequer  on  all  such  finds,  and  the  charges  for 
licenses  to  extract  ore  are  so  exorbitant  that  no  native  company  can  stand 
them,  not  to  speak,  of  individual  effort,  which  is  totally  inadequate.  So  that, 
with  wealth  untold  under  one's  feet,  it  is  cheaper  for  Russian  manufacturers  to 
import  their  raw  material,  even  though  we  by  no  means  rejoice  in  free  trade. 
Then  a  German  or  American  syndicate  comes  along,  goes  into  things,  makes 
an  oflfer,  and  lo  !  all  doors  open  before  them,  and  though  red  tape  and  "to- 
morrows "  are  not  spared  even  to  them,  favors,  privileges,  exemptions  are 
showered  upon  them.  They  go  to  work,  and  make  colossal  fortunes,  which 
they  carry  out  of  the  country — and  sneer  at  the  Russians  for  a  set  of  im- 
provident, narrow-minded,  short-sighted  sluggards,  too  ignorant  and  lazy 
to  pick  up  the  wealth  which  is  simplj'  wasted  on  them.  There  is  no  doubt 
that  this  state  of  things,  especially  the  mistake  of  maintaining  compulsory 
settlement  and  culture,  have  much  to  do  with  the  present  disaster.  The 
liberal  press  cried  itself  hoarse  at  the  time,  foretelling  the  logically  impend- 
ing ruin,  which  has  come  to  pass,  for  logic  does  not  deceive  as  statistics 
sometimes  do.  The  present  emperor,  Alexander  III.,  has  come  to  the  relief 
of  the  peasantry  in  every  way  ;  remitted  arrears,  paid  up  large  instalments 
of  the  so-called  "redemption  certificates"  (the  purchase  money  for  their 
lands,  paid  out  to  the  proprietors  in  a  lump),  distributed  large  quantities 
of  grain  against  seeding  time,  fed  thousands  of  families,  rebuilt  bumed- 
up  villages.  His  great  heart  is  ever  open  to  their  needs,  his  hand  never 
closes — all  in  vain  !  A  column  of  figures  can  add  up  in  only  one  way.  And 
until  the  evil  is  struck  at  the  root,  and  the  grown-up  men  of  Russia  are 
officially  acknowledged  capable  to  discriminate  what  is  best  for  them  and  to 
know  their  own  minds,  and  allowed  to  act  accordingly,  there  is  no  salvation. 
This  compulsory  coupling  of  man  and  earth  is  unnatural,  and  has  come  to 
be  like  the  binding  of  a  living  body  to  a  corpse.  And  all  the  time  there 
lies  the  immense  South  in  the  sun,  wide  open,  awaiting  only  hands  to  treble 
the  wealth  of  the  empire,  and  that  for  all  times,  inexhaustibly. 


APPENDIX  TO  BOOK  I.,  CHAPTER  II.— NO.  2.     (See  p.  24,  note  5.) 

Not  ignorance  entirely.  When  it  is  the  Russian  people  that  are  in 
question,  the  word  comes  glibly  to  the  lips  or  pen  of  even  our  friends, 
when  "  poverty  "  should  stand  instead, — and  other  things.  If  the  peasants 
could  have  aflforded  more  cattle  and  horses  through  all  these  years,  and  if  the 


34       THE  EMPIRE   OF   THE    TSARS  AND   THE  RUSSIANS. 

few  poor  beasts  they  did  manage  to  keep  had  not  been  so  often  sold  oflF  for 
arrears  of  taxes  and  to  satisfy  the  claims  of  the  local  bloodsucker,  the  ruth- 
less usurer,  known  under  the  graphic  nickname  of  "village  fist"  (kuldk), 
to  whom  they  are  fatally  driven  by  the  absolute  necessity  of  procuring  grain 
against  seeding  time,  or  money  for  the  collector  or  something  as  vital, — 
things  might  be  different.  The  reason  why  the  exhaustion  of  the  soil  has 
been  progressing  at  so  frightful  a  rate  of  late  years  is  that  freedom  has  come 
to  the  peasant  weighted  with  the  taxes  which  did  not  concern  him  under 
the  old  rigime,  besides  the  obligation  of  paying  for  his  land  to  the  State, 
which  had  advanced  the  money  to  buy  off  the  former  landlord.  He  has 
succumbed  under  the  load,  that  's  all.  And  the  land,  which  was  to  a 
certain  extent  looked  after  by  the  landlord,  has  simply  gone  to  rack  and 
ruin  because  its  present  owner  is  not  allowed  to  keep  a  sufficient  percentage 
on  the  produce  of  his  labor  upon  it  to  secure  a  bare  sustenance  to  himself  and 
his,  let  alone  improving  the  soil.  This  is  one  of  the  reasons — which  I  have 
not  seen  mentioned  anywhere — why  the  present  famine  is  not  only  so 
universal,  but  so  permanent,  a  phenomenon  not  to  be  explained  by  a  couple 
of  bad  seasons  in  such  a  land.  It  is  the  general  deterioration  of  one  of  the 
granaries  of  the  earth.  It  would  take  millions  for  fertilizers  and  years 
of  rest  to  restore  the  soil  to  its  natural  richness.  So  where  is  there  hope  ? 
It  might  be  done,  if  the  people  were  freed  from  compulsory  residence  on 
their  lands.  They  would  gladly  pay  the  taxes  for  them  and — rush  into 
the  glorious  South,  which  is  virtually  virgin  soil  and  is  being  wasted  for 
lack  of  hands.  The  Government  might  then  take  in  hand  the  temporarily 
half-deserted  region,  which  would  fill  quickly  enough  once  it  became  its 
old  self  again.  It  is  a  simple  plan,  and.  Heaven  knows,  feasible  enough 
with  the  untold  millions  of  vacant  acres,  but — it  won't  be  done  !  "  Igno- 
rance "  is  easily  said,  but  so  conscientious  an  inquirer,  so  good  a  friend,  as  our 
author  should  not  be  quite  so  quick  with  the  word.  What,  then,  shall  we  say 
of  the  New  England  farmers  as  a  body,  who,  with  nothing  to  hamper  or 
hinder  them,  have  allowed  land  throughout  their  States,  ever  since  they  first 
took  possession  of  it,  to  go  down  to  nominal  value  and  deteriorate  till  it  is 
impossible  for  an  ordinary  family  to  make  more  than  a  bare  living  out  of  a 
hundred-acre  farm  with  unceasing  toil  and  the  plainest  of  fares— just  in  the 
same  way  :  by  taking  and  taking  from  the  soil  without  putting  enough  in — 
and  that  originally  not  from  lack  of  means,  but  from  the  thrift  that  hates  to 
lay  out  to-day  a  dollar  that  is  to  bring  a  return,  and  an  ample  one,  not  to- 
morrow, but  in  a  year  or  perhaps  two.  Now  of  course  it  is  different :  the 
means  are  wanting,  and  the  farms  to  be  had  for  the  asking. 


BOOK  I.     CHAPTER  III. 

Homogeneousness  of  the  Country — Its  Vast  Plains  were  Destined  to  Politi- 
cal Unity — ^Uneven  Population — How,  for  a  Length  of  Time,  it  was 
Distributed  after  an  Utterly  Artificial  Manner — Relative  Importance 
of  the  Various  Regions — Vital  and  Accessory  Parts — Russia  a  Country 
Bom  of  Colonization — Her  Double  Task  and  Consequent  Contradictions. 

The  physical  diversity  of  the  various  regions  of  the  country 
must  not  blind  us  to  their  homogeneousness.  Russia  is  so  natu- 
rally one,  that,  short  of  an  island  or  a  peninsula,  no  country  in  the 
world  is  more  clearly  stamped  for  the  dwelling-place  of  a  nation. 
Through  all  their  dijBferences,  all  their  physical  and  economical  op- 
positions, the  two  great  zones  of  North  and  South  belong  together 
like  two  halves  that  complete  each  other  and  cannot  be  separated. 
In  the  first  place  they  have  in  common  the  soil,  the  plain,  which 
admit  of  no  barrier,  no  possible  boundary  ;  in  the  second  place, 
the  climate  is  common  to  both  ;  the  winter,  which  for  weeks  and 
weeks  gathers  them  under  one  mantle  of  snow.  In  January  you 
can  sleigh  it  from  Arkhangelsk  or  Petersburgh  to  Astrakhan. 
The  absence  of  snow  would  be  for  the  South  as  dire  a  calamity, 
and  nearly  as  rare  as  for  the  North.  As  in  the  southern  steppes, 
so  in  the  forests  that  skirt  the  polar  circle,  the  rivers- are  ice-bound 
for  months.  The  Sea  of  Azof  freezes  just  like  the  White  Sea,  and 
the  northern  half  of  the  Caspian  just  as  the  Gulf  of  Finland. 
The  Black  Sea  is  the  only  one  of  Russian  seas  the  ports  of  which 
are  not  all  closed  by  ice  in  exceptionally  severe  winters  *  ;  but  the 
limanSy  or  broad  estuaries  of  the  great  rivers,  do  freeze  up  almost 
regularly.  As  a  rule,  the  navigation  on  the  Black  Sea  is  not  in- 
'  See  preceding  Chapter,  note  6. 
35 


36      THE  EMPIRE   OF    THE    TSARS  AND    THE  RUSSIANS. 

terrupted  ;  but  under  the  breath  of  the  north  wind,  along  the 
coast  of  Crimea  just  as  along  that  of  Canada,  vessels  not  unfre- 
quently  have  their  rigging  hardened  by  frost,  and  their  hulls 
coated  with  a  congealed  crust,  which  make  them  heavy  and 
stiflF,  and  seriously  imperil  them. 

With  no  mountains  to  part  them,  the  two  zones,  with  their 
forests  and  steppes,  are  linked  together  by  their  rivers.  Of  these  the 
greatest  have  their  sources  in  the  one,  their  estuary  in  the  other. 
The  difiFerent  natural  regions  do  not  correspond  to  the  various 
basins  :  that  of  the  Arctic  Sea  holds  only  the  extreme  north,  that 
of  the  Baltic  only  the  western  provinces ;  the  entire  centre  and 
the  east  incline  southward,  as  represented  by  their  rivers,  the 
Dniepr,  the  Don,  and,  above  all,  the  Volga,  the  Russian  Missis- 
sippi, which  carries  to  the  Caspian  the  melted  snows  of  the 
Ural,  together  with  the  waters  from  the  lakes  of  the  low  table- 
land of  Valday. 

It  is  not  only  by  what  they  have  in  common,  but  just  as 
much  by  their  discrepancies  that  the  two  great  zones  are  united. 
The  more  widely  their  soil,  their  products  differ,  the  more  exclu- 
sive the  call  which  they  seem  to  have  received  from  nature,  com- 
pelling each  to  seek  assistance  from  the  other.  The  central  region 
alone,  where  forests  and  cultivated  fields  touch  and  mingle,  the 
principality  of  Moscow  of  old,  might  be  all-sufficient  to  itself. 
Neither  the  North  nor  the  South  could.  The  North  needs  the 
grain  of  the  South,  the  South  wants  the  wood  and  timber  of  the 
North.  If  ever  nature  herself  traced  the  outline  of  an  empire,  it 
was  when  she  drew  the  lines  from  the  Baltic  to  the  Ural,  from  the 
Arctic  Ocean  to  the  Black  and  Caspian  Seas.  The  frame  was 
clearly  marked,  history  had  only  to  fill  it  out.  These  vast  regions 
were  as  fatally  doomed  to  political  unity  as  countries  ten  or  twelve 
times  smaller,  like  France  or  Italy  ;  and  not  only  that,  but  the 
plain  was  to  make  the  process  both  easier  and  more  rapid. 

In  this  respect  Russia  has  the  advantage  of  another  colossus 
of  the  modem  world.     In  the  general  flatness  of  the  soil,  in  the 


NATURE,    CLIMATE,   AND   SOIL.  37 

relative  sameness  of  the  climate,  she  has  more  solid  guaranties  for 
her  unity  than  the  United  States  of  North  America,  the  North  and 
South  of  which  are,  indeed,  also  strongly  linked  together  by  a 
great  river,  but  where  contrasts  of  every  kind  are  more  accentu- 
ated, and  could  be  still  increased  by  territorial  acquisitions  to  the 
North  and  to  the  South. 

In  Asia,  as  in  Europe,  it  is  nature  that  has  marked  out  the 
field  for  Russia's  sway.  From  the  high  tablelands  of  the  Ural 
her  rule  spreads  over  the  Siberian  plains  ;  from  the  low  flats  of 
the  Don  and  the  Volga,  over  the  depressed  basin  of  the  Caspian 
and  over  Central  Asia.  Asiatic  Russia,  especially  Western  Siberia, 
is  not  to  the  Russians  an  alien  colony,  impossible  to  assimilate, 
diflScult  to  keep ;  it  is  a  prolongation,  a  natural  continuation  of 
their  European  territory.  Far  from  resembling  the  ephemeral 
creations  of  the  Asiatic  conquerors,  the  Russian  Empire  is  a  solid 
structure,  of  which  Providence  itself  has  laid  the  foundations. 
There  may  be  some  uncertainty  about  its  definitive  boundaries, 
more  especially  towards  the  West,  the  line  of  contact  with  Western 
Europe,  where  history  has  created  live  forces  independent  of 
physical  conditions.  But,  no  matter  whether  she  win  or  lose  a 
few  provinces  between  the  Baltic  and  the  Karpathian  Mountains, 
Russia  is  sure  to  remain  one  whole,  with  her  two  grand  zones, 
sure  to  keep  her  sway  over  the  low  and  cold  region  of  the  old 
continent,  an  immense  region  created  for  unity  and  therefore 
doomed  for  a  long  time  to  centralization  and  absolutism. 

Nature  drew  the  plan  of  the  Russian  Empire  even  before  Peter 
the  Great ;  when  and  how  will  that  immense  frame  be  filled  out  ? 
How  many  hundreds  of  millions  will  be  accounted  subjects  of  the 
Tsar  ?  What  figure  will  the  population  of  this  empire  reach,  the 
vastest  on  earth,  and  so  far,  in  proportion  to  its  extent,  the  least 
populous  ? 

One  fact  strikes  you  at  the  first  glance:  it  is  the  uneven  density 
of  the  population.  Even  in  Russia  proper,  situated  in  Europe, 
there  are  districts  which  have,  to  the  same  area,  a  hundred  times 


38      THE  EMPIRE   OF   THE    TSARS  AND   THE  RUSSIANS. 

the  population  of  others.  The  influences  which  have  been  at 
work  to  regulate  this  uneven  distribution  are  twofold — ^historical 
and  physical  :  the  latter,  essential,  permanent ;  the  former,  acci- 
dental, transitory,  and  consequently  bound  to  yield  to  the  others 
in  the  end.  History,  owing  to  their  geographical  position,  has 
for  a  long  time  shaped  the  two  zones'  destinies,  but  little  in  accord- 
ance with  the  nature  of  the  soil  and  the  climate.  Confining  with 
the  steppes  of  Central  Asia,  the  woodless  zone  was  the  first 
exposed  to  the  inroads  of  the  Asiatic  nomads,  and  the  last  wrested 
from  them.  Hence  an  abnormal  development  of  the  two  regions 
and  a  distribution  of  the  population  to  some  extent  artificial. 
Leaving  out  the  West,  which,  being  far  away  from  Asia,  worked 
out  a  destiny  of  its  own,  the  most  fertile  regions  were  the  last  to 
be  inhabited,  the  last  to  be  cultivated.  Agriculture,  hence 
wealth  and  civilization,  could  not  for  centuries  thrive  and  blossom 
on  the  spot  marked  out  to  them  by  nature.  Replied  from  the 
south  by  the  inroads  of  the  nomads,  the  Russians  were  relegated 
to  the  regions  of  the  north,  incapable  as  these  are  to  support  a 
numerous  population,  a  great  civilization.*  The  eflFects  of  this 
anomaly,  which  were  still  keenly  felt  in  the  eighteenth  centurj^ 
are  now  rapidly  vanishing.  The  southern  half  of  the  empire 
already  holds  a  far  greater  number  of  inhabitants  than  the  north  ; 
there  are  certain  tracts  of  the  Black  Mould  region  which  lay  in 
great  part  waste  a  century  or  two  ago,  and  are  now  counted 
among  the  most  populous.  Population  still  crowds  chiefly 
around  the  two  historical  centres  of  old  Russia — Kief  and 
Moscow.  But  old  habit  is  no  longer  the  principal  cause  of 
this.  At  Kief  the  attraction  lies  in  the  soil  and  the  climate  ;  at 
Moscow  it  is  the  central  position  and  industry  that  detain  and 
draw  people,  while  the  fallen  queen  of  the  North,  Great  N6v- 

*  Nothing  but  the  utter  ignorance  of  Western  Europe  concerning 
Russia  could -warrant  the  saying  that  "the  Russians  must  be  sent  back 
into  their  steppes,  whence  they  never  should  have  issued."  Far  from  com- 
ing out  of  the  steppes,  it  is  only  at  a  comparatively  recent  date  they  set 
their  foot  in  them. 


NATURE,    CLIMATE,   AND   SOIL.  39 

gorod,  sees  around  her  forsaken  kremlin  '^  a  sparse  sprinkling  of 
inhabitants  as  poor  as  the  wretched  resources  of  her  surrounding 
fields. 

Physical  conditions  being  identical,  the  population  of  a  country 
increases  in  proportion  to  its  civilization.  Every  transition  from 
one  stage  of  culture  to  another :  from  pastoral  and  nomadic  to 
settled  agricultural  life, — from  purely  agricultural  to  commercial 
and  industrial  life — every  step  even  from  one  way  of  working  the 
ground  to  another,  more  productive  one  ;  for  instance,  from  such 
desultory  agriculture  as  is  practised  in  the  steppes  to  the  method 
of  triennial  rotation,  from  ^;rtensive  to  /^tensive  farming — every 
such  step  enlarges  the  field  for  population.  In  Russia,  where, 
even  in  the  European  part  of  it,  can  be  found  all  the  modes  of 
existence  from  that  of  the  nomad  hunter,  the  only  regions  cap- 
able of  considerable  increase  in  the  population  are  those  which 
can  pass  from  one  stage  of  culture  to  another.  But  there  are 
several  that  are  debarred  by  nature  fi-om  such  an  advance :  the 
extreme  north  is  set  apart  by  nature  for  fishing  and  the  chase,  as 
the  Uralo-Caspian  steppes  for  pastoral  life.' 

As  industrial  life  is  only  just  budding  in  Russia,*  it  is  to  agri- 

*  Kremlin  (more  correctly  kreml),  the  thing  and  the  word,  is  the  exact 
equivalent  of  the  Greek  akropolis.  Every  old  Russian  city  had  its  kremlin 
It  is  the  central  fortified  enclosure,  always  on  an  elevation,  however  slight; 
the  place  of  shelter  in  danger,  of  safe-keeping  of  the  city's  treasury  and 
shrines  in  peace. 

*  The  trouble  is  that  nature  is  systematically  thwarted,  at  least  in  the 
case  of  the  north,  with  results  that  go  widening  in  their  effects  as  the  circle 
in  the  water.     See  preceding  chapter,  appendix. 

■*  Industrial  life  would  be  much  more  than  "  budding,"  the  decided 
forte  of  the  Russian  genius  being  applied  science,  if  things  and  people 
were  let  alone.  But  one  cannot  open  a  laundry  or  lunch-room  without  a 
special  license.  Red  tape  and  the  exorbitant  dues  and  percentages,  not  to 
mention  the  "  sundry  "  cost  item,  devour  the  possible  future  profits  before 
work  has  begun,  in  a  country  where  capital  is  not  yet  equal  to  such  drains. 
They  may,  in  the  end,  not  amount  to  more  than  advertising  comes  to  in 
this  country  ;  but  then  advertising  is  a  voluntary  outlay,  under  the  enter- 
priser's control,  and  materially  helps  his  business,  while  the  disproportion- 
ate tribute  levied  at  every  step  by  the  Russian  exchequer  yields  no  return 
whatever  to  the  undertaking  which  it  cripples  beforehand. 


40      THE  EMPIRE  OF   THE    TSARS  AND   THE  RUSSIANS. 

culture  we  must  look  for  nearly  all  the  development  of  population 
to  be  expected  in  the  near  future.  But  then  agricultiire  is,  more 
than  industrial  enterprise,  immediately  dependent  on  physical 
conditions,  therefore  the  increase  of  poptdation  in  Russia  is 
almost  entirely  controlled  by  climate,  the  degree  of  moisture,  the 
geographical  situation,  and,  above  all,  the  fertility  of  the  soil. 
Were  it  not  for  the  delay  which  history  has  imposed  on  the 
southern  regions,  the  density  of  the  population  would  be  in 
almost  direct  ratio  to  the  fertilitj'  of  the  soil. 

This  tendency  gives  the  key  to  a  curious  phenomenon  in 
statistics.  Take  European  Russia  with  Poland,  and  you  will  see 
that  two  thirds  of  the  entire  population  do  not  occupy  quite  one 
third  of  the  territorj',  and,  more  singular  still,  it  is  in  the  most 
populous  region  that  population  increases  most  rapidly.  This 
seeming  anomaly  is  easily  explained  :  the  zone  where  population 
is  densest  and  increases  most  includes  the  most  productive  por- 
tions of  the  empire.  It  comprises  the  two  regions  which  own  the 
best  lands,  the  Black  Mould  belt  and  the  arable  steppes  ;  it  takes 
in  the  great  industrial  tract  around  Moscow,  and,  lastly,  along 
the  western  frontier,  a  mixed  region,  at  once  agricultural  and 
industrial,  composed  of  the  quondam  kingdom  of  Poland,  and  a 
portion  of  the  adjoining  provinces — a  country  whose  rise  was 
favored  both  by  its  geographical  situation  and  ancient  civilization. 
The  industrial  region  of  Moscow  owes  its  numerous  population 
not  so  much  to  historical  causes  as  to  its  central  situation  between 
the  two  great  river  thoroughfares,  the  Volga  and  its  aflBuent  the 
Ok^,  and  to  the  twofold  vicinity  of  the  finest  forest  lands  of  the 
north  and  the  richest  Black  Mould  lands.  Put  together,  these 
four  regions  cover,  this  side  of  the  Ural,  not  more  than  about 
1,000,000  (one  million)  square  miles  out  of  an  area  of  over  three 
millions,  while  they  number  55,000,000  or  60,000,000  people  out 
of  a  total  population  of  about  90,000,000.  It  is  at  their  point 
of  junction,  near  the  meridian  of  Moscow,  that  Russia's  natiu^l 
centre  of  gravity  may  be  located.      Tliere  lie  the  vital  parts  of 


NATURE,    CLIMATE,  AND  SOIL.  4I 

the  empire.  The  other  regions,  covering  two  thirds  of  its  Euro- 
pean territor>',  are  only  more  or  less  necessary  appendages  ;  their 
degree  of  importance  is  determined  by  their  relations  with  the 
central  nucleus,  some  linking  it  to  one  or  other  sea  by  means  of 
long  rivers,  which  open  to  it  the  issues  on  Europe  and  Asia, — 
others  presenting  it  with  the  precious  mineral  wealth  hidden  in 
their  mountains, — others  again,  the  largest  number  too,  keeping 
for  it  in  their  forests  immense  reserves  of  timber,  while  some  few 
in  the  south  are  its  gardens,  hot-houses,  and  orchards. 

The  uneven  distribution  of  inhabitants  over  the  various  prov- 
inces aflfects  the  statistical  averages  in  a  way  to  greatly  mislead 
on  the  subject  of  the  real  relation  between  the  population  and  the 
area  it  covers.  If  the  empire,  as  a  whole,  has  only  eight  inhabi- 
tants to  the  square  mile  ;  if  European  Russia  herself  numbers  only 
twenty-eight  or  thirty,  the  most  productive  parts,  the  industrial 
region  of  Moscow,  the  agricultural  one  of  Black  Mould,  are  very 
nearly  as  densely  peopled  as  Central  Europe,  and  already  have 
got  ahead  of  Spain.  Instead  of  being  sprinkled  over  immense 
areas  till  they  are  almost  lost  to  sight,  two  thirds  of  Russia's 
entire  population  are  concentrated  within  an  area  scarcely  more 
than  thrice  the  size  of  France.  Now,  in  Russia  as  everyivhere 
else,  the  compactness  of  the  population  gives  greater  facilities  to 
civilization,  more  power  and  cohesion  to  the  people,  more  means 
of  action  to  the  government. 

From  one  half  of  her  European  territory  and  from  three  quar- 
ters of  her  Asiatic  possessions,  laboring  under  the  curse  of  either 
extreme  cold  or  extreme  drought,  Russia  cannot  expect  any  nota- 
ble increase  of  population.  Asiatic  Russia,  although  three  times 
the  size  of  European  Russia,  seems  incapable  of  feeding  even  an 
equal  population.  With  eighty  millions,  Siberia,  Turkestan,  and 
Transcaucasia  put  together  might  be  comparatively  as  well  off  as 
the  Russia  this  side  of  the  Ural  with  a  hundred.  Taking  into 
consideration  the  physical  and  economical  conditions  of  the  em- 
pire, also  the  demands  of  life  as  to  food,  clothing,  warmth,  Russia 


42       THE   EMPIRE   OF   THE    TSARS  AND   THE  RUSSIANS. 

seems  fated  to  drop  behind  the  United  States  in  regard  to  popula- 
tion, and  even,  it  may  be,  in  two  or  three  centuries  from  now, 
behind  Brazil.  Notwithstanding  the  vastness  of  her  domain,  she 
is  not  at  all  sure  ever  to  exceed  India's  250,000,000,  or,  conse- 
quently, China's  half  milliard.  Indeed,  it  is  not  impossible  that 
innumerable  hordes  from  the  latter  country  may  at  some  future 
time  push  up  northward  and  strive  to  wrest  from  the  Russian 
colonists  the  possession  of  Siberia,  if  not  of  Central  Asia  itself. 

Whatever  may  be  the  probabilities  for  or  against  these  remote 
prospects,  Russia  already  has  1 15,000,000  of  inhabitants,  and  about 
the  year  1950  she  will  have  180,000,000  on  one  continuous  territory, 
a  thing  not  to  be  thought  of  for  any  other  European  nation,  unless 
the  Germans,  with  their  persistent  "eastward  push"  {^'^  Drang 
nach  Osten  "),  succeed  in  extending  their  rule,  at  the  cost  of  the 
Slavs,  over  the  greater  part  of  ancient  Poland,  on  Austro-Hungary, 
and  possibly  over  the  Balkan  peninsula. 

In  Europe  as  well  as  in  Asia  it  is  principally  to  the  soil  and 
agriculture  that  the  Tsar  must  look  for  an  increase,  in  the  near 
future,  of  the  number  of  his  subjects.  Field  labor,  however,  is 
far  from  being  their  only  resource.  In  many  a  district,  notably  in 
the  central  region,  industrial  enterprise  already  contributes  to  the 
increase,  not  only  of  wealth,  but  of  the  population  too.  Russia  is 
already  far  better  equipped  in  this  respect  than  she  was  ever 
thought  to  be.  Industry  will  sooner  or  later  take  a  vigorous 
start,  and  even  now  is  progressing  rapidly.  Should  they  ever  be 
allowed  to  draw  their  means  of  sustenance  from  abroad,  the 
number  of  inhabitants  might,  on  the  strength  of  this  one  item, 
multiply  indefinitely. 

Russia  not  only  finds  within  her  own  boundaries  the  raw 
material  for  almost  every  possible  fabrication — thus,  for  instance, 
Russian  cotton  factories  use  scarcely  any  cotton  but  that  grown  in 
Turkestan — but  nature  has  endowed  her  with  the  two  great  agents 
of  modem  labor — iron  and  coal.  It  is  not  half  understood  what 
immense  coal  mines  underlie  the   Russian  plains.     They  keep 


NATURE,    CLIMATE,    AND   SOIL.  43 

showing  up  on  all  sides,  every  kind  and  quality — in  the  north,  in 
the  centre,  around  Moscow  ;  the  southeast  (basin  of  the  Donets)  ; 
in  the  southwest  in  the  governments  of  Kief  and  Khers6n ;  in 
Poland  and  on  both  sides  the  Caucasus  ;  in  Asia  itself  in  the 
Kirghiz  steppes  ;  in  the  basin  of  the  Amoor  and  the  isle  of  Sak- 
halin. To  coal  and  anthracite  the  Caspian  coasts  add  naphtha  and 
petroleum.  After  being  trammelled  in  the  north  by  the  lack 
of  openings,  in  the  south  by  the  lack  of  combustible  materials,  the 
industrial  development  will  soon  be  quickened,  once  the  railway 
lines  are  completed  and  some  of  the  coal  mines  are  worked.  And 
industry  will  open  the  way  to  agriculture  by  opening  out  regions 
now  lying  waste  and  enticing  the  tiller  of  the  earth  to  follow. 
Thus  the  mines  of  the  Ural  lead  to  the  fertile  plains  of  Western 
Siberia  ;  those  of  the  Altay  and  Amoor  Mountains  will  draw  cul- 
ture into  the  very  heart  of  Asia,  just  as,  in  California  and  Aus- 
tralia, culture  came  at  the  heels  of  the  goldseekers. 

If  Russia's  mineral  wealth  has  long  slept  inactive  under  the 
grass  of  the  steppes  or  the  trees  of  the  forests,  the  reasons  have 
been  many  ;  the  most  bountiful  stores  unfortunately  lie  at  the 
confines  of  Asia,  in  places  of  difficult  access,  some  of  them  half- 
desert  still  or  insufficiently  connected  with  the  centre  of  the  empire  ; 
then  there  are  the  distances  and  the  high  cost  of  transport ;  then, 
again,  the  scarcity  of  the  population,  and  worse  still,  their  poverty 
and  ignorance— all  serious  obstacles  to  industrial  development. 
The  nature  of  the  soil,  the  rigor  of  the  climate,  history,  the  habits 
of  the  people,  even  to  the  social  conditions — these  were  so  many 
drawbacks  which  condemned  the  eastern  plain-land  of  Europe 
to  remain  stationary  a  long  time  as  an  essentially  rural  and 
ag^cultural  country. 

In  order  to  gain  a  proper  appreciation  of  the  economical  con- 
dition of  Russia  we  must  not  lose  sight  of  the  fact  that,  under 
Peter  the  Great  she  had  not  quite  fifteen  millions  of  inhabitants  ; 
that  as  late  as  the  middle  of  last  century  her  population  did  not 
yet  equal  that  of  France  under  I^ouis  XV.,  and  at  the  beginning 


44      THE  EMPIRE  OF  THE    TSARS  AND   THE  RUSSIANS. 

of  the  present  century  that  of  the  German  Empire  of  to-day.*  If 
we  take  up  the  successive  censuses  and  examine  into  their  statis- 
tics it  will  be  seen  that  Russia  is  a  country  in  the  process  of  making 
up  its  population.  She  is,  in  many  respects,  just  a  colony  ;  and 
this  is  a  fact  of  capital  importance  to  any  one  desirous  of  seriously 
gauging  both  her  resources  and  her  difficulties.  Yes,  Russia  is  a 
colony,  and  her  history  is  really  that  of  her  colonization.  The 
first  turn  was  the  west's,  then  came  the  north  and  centre,  and 
now  the  turn  has  come  to  the  south  and  the  east.  The  lower 
basins  of  the  Dniepr,  the  Don,  the  Volga  can  be,  in  this  respect, 
compared  to  those  of  the  Missouri  and  the  Mississippi,  the  Russian 
East  to  the  American  West.  The  colonial  character  shows  in  the 
dates  of  the  foundation  of  cities,  as  well  as  in  the  rapidity  of  their 
progress,  and  their  very  looks.  Sebastbpol,  Khers6n,  Nicol^yef, 
Kh^rkof,  Taganr6g,  Rost6f,  Saratof,  Samdra,  Perm,  Orenburg, 
the  greater  part  of  the  capitals  of  governments  or  districts  in  the 
south  and  east,  are  younger  than  the  capitals  of  the  Atlantic 
States  in  North  America.  Odessa,  a  creation  of  the  Due  de  Riche- 
lieu, is  not  quite  a  century  old,  and  already  holds  as  many 
inhabitants  as  Rouen  and  Hdvre  put  together.  The  region  named 
New  Russia,  of  which  Odessa  is  the  capital,  is  as  felicitously 
named  as  the  New  England  of  the  United  States,  and  the  coloni- 
zation of  it  is  far  more  recent.  This  country,  wellaigh  a  desert  at 
the  beginning  of  the  century,  has  actually  increased  its  population 
tenfold  within  less  than  a  hundred  years.  The  growth  of  the 
towns  and  the  rural  districts  on  the  banks  of  the  Don  and  the 

*  The  so-called  *'  revisions,"  operated  at  irregular  intervals,  for  the 
single  purpose  of  ascertaining  the  numbers  of  the  taxable  population,  took 
in  only  the  males  of  the  classes  subject  to  the  capitation  tax,  and  can,  con- 
sequently, furnish  only  approximative  data.  These  revisions  suppose  the 
entire  population,  in  its  successive  increase,  to  amount  to  the  following 
figures  in  the  given  years  :  14  or  15  millions  in  1723  ;  16  or  17  in  1742  ;  19 
or  20  in  1762  ;  28  or  30  in  1782  ;  36  in  1796  ;  41  in  1812  ;  45  in  1815  ;  65  in 
1835  ;  68  in  1851  ;  75  in  185^.  See  Schnitzler's  Empire  of  the  Tsars,  v.  ii., 
pp.  5  ff.  In  1889  it  was  calculated  that  the  population  had  already  reached 
the  figure  of  over  no  millions. 


NATURE,    CLIMATE,  AND  SOIL.  45 

Volga,  in  the  latitude  of  Vor6nej  and  Sardtof,  has  scarcely  been 
less  rapid. 

The  aspect  of  all  these- cities  in  the  south  and  the  east  is  just 
what  would  be  expected  from  their  recent  origin.  As  in  the  Far 
West  of  the  United  States,  they  are  all  built  on  a  large  scale,  all  one 
like  the  other,  with  no  feature  of  interest,  without  individuality, 
with  no  other  difference  than  that  of  site.  I^ike  those  of  America, 
they  cover  far  more  space  than  European  cities  with  an  equal 
number  of  inhabitants.  One  feels  that  they  were  constructed  less 
for  the  present  than  for  the  future,  in  view  of  an  indefinite  growth 
which  has  not  always  progressed  as  fast  as  it  was  hoped.  With 
their  huge  public  buildings,  their  ambitious  boulevards,  and  their 
broad  streets  to  be  filled  by  coming  generations,  the  most  prosper- 
ous have  an  unfinished  look,  temporary  yet  pretentious,  which  is 
not  pleasing  to  travellers.  As  in  America,  the  cities,  instead  of 
following  in  the  track  of  agriculture,  have  preceded  it ;  but  then 
more  than  one  of  these  presumptuous  cities  has  been,  on  the 
morrow  of  its  foundation,  forsaken  in  favor  of  a  better  situated 
rival,  and  left  with  its  huge  square  and  mute  avenues  which  no 
crowd  will  ever  enliven. 

It  is  curious  to  measure  even  at  this  early  hour  the  conquests 
of  Russian  colonization,  to  calculate  how  many  parallels  of  lati- 
tude, or  how  many  degrees  of  longitude,  from  north  to  south,  from 
east  to  west,  it  has  won  from  nature  or  from  barbarism  :  there  is 
all  the  vast  region  of  the  steppes  and  the  Black  Mould,  the  haunt 
of  the  horseman  of  old,  Scyth,  Tatar,  or  Cosack,  there  are  the 
shores  of  the  Black  and  Azof  Seas,  where  in  the  beginning  of 
modem  times  the  Genoese  still  held  fortified  counting-houses, 
such  as  the  French  keep  along  the  coast  of  Guinea.  This  is  the 
greatest,  possibly  the  only  conquest  of  the  West  from  the  East, 
of  Europe  fi-om  Asia ;  it  were  more  correct  to  say  that  Europe, 
thanks  to  the  Russians,  has  nearly  doubled  her  area  at  the 
expense  of  Asia. 

Have  we  not  there  a  grand  result  ?    And  with  what  resources, 


46      THE  EMPIRE   OF   THE    TSARS  AND  THE  RUSSIANS. 

what  elements  has  this  immense  and  rapid  colonization  been 
achieved  ;  is  it  going  on  still  ?  With  the  Russian  people,  who,  to 
effect  this  great  work,  have  received  from  abroad  none  but  ineflfi- 
cient,  insignificant  assistance.  The  two  Americas,  Australia,  all 
the  colonies  of  both  hemispheres,  receive  every  year  a  consider- 
able contingent  of  emigrants  and  European  capital.  Russia  has 
been  compelled  to  colonize  herself  without  anybody's  aid,  either 
in  men  or  money.  A  colonization  carried  on  without  immigra- 
tion, by  a  country  itself  deficient  in  population,  by  a  nation  itself 
only  half  civilized — such  has  been  the  task  accomplished  by 
Russia. 

If  Russia  has  colonized  herself  it  is  not  that  she  did  not  ask 
Europe  for  emigrants.  Many  did  come  from  two  sides — ^first  from 
Germany,  then  from  the  Greek-Orthodox  provinces  of  Turkey  and 
Austria.  These  two  classes  of  colonists,  who  arrived  in  the  middle 
of  the  eighteenth  and  the  beginning  of  the  nineteenth  century, 
played  an  unequal  part,  but  both  had  only  a  secondary  local  share 
in  the  immense  work.  The  Germans  are  the  most  numerous.  Rus- 
sia in  modem  times  has  offered  the  first  opening  to  Teutonic  emi- 
gration, which  has  not  worked  as  well  there  as  in  America. 
Called  in  by  Catherine  II.  and  other  Russian  sovereigns,  settled 
on  the  choicest  lands,  sprinkled  a  little  all  over,  from  Peterhof  at 
the  gates  of  St.  Petersburgh  to  beyond  the  Caucasus,  but  especially 
in  New  Russia  and  along  the  Lower  Volga,  these  Germans  have 
kept  well  together  in  separate  groups,  alien  patches  in  the  midst 
of  the  native  population,  not  mixing  with  it  nor  exerting  any 
influence  over  it.* 

At  the  present  day  they  number  many  hundred  thousands,  that 
preserve  their  religion,  their  language,  their  manners  and  customs, 
bearing  the  name  of  colonists,  and  forming  under  this  designation 
a  separate  class  which,  until  very  lately,  enjoyed  particular  privi- 

*  Besides  these  German  colonists,  there  are  the  Germans  of  the  Baltic 
provinces,  about  160,000  of  them,  then  the  tradesmen  and  craftsmen  of  Ger- 
man or  Austrian  origin,  dispersed  over  the  various  cities. 


NATURE,    CLIMATE,   AND   SOIL.  4/ 

leges, — exemption  from  military  service  in  the  number.*  I^iving 
as  foreigners  in  the  state  whose  subjects  they  are,  these  colonists 
are  distinguished  by  many  essentially  Teutonic  qualities,  such  as 
the  spirit  of  order,  of  economy,  of  family  solidarity.  In  the  isola- 
tion of  their  small  communes,  they  have  made  for  themselves  a 
small  civilization  of  their  own,  a  domestic  civilization  so  to  speak. 
They  have  formed  agricultural  colonies,  very  curious  for  the  poli- 
tician and  the  philosopher  to  observe.  They  have  achieved  a 
moderate  competence  without  being  able  ever  to  rise  any  higher. 
Hence  it  is  that  their  influence  on  the  Russian  people,  which  in 
material  things  is  almost  naught,  is  still  less  morally.f  Whatever 
share  Germany  has  had — and  it  is  a  large  one — in  the  develop- 
ment of  Russia,  she  has  owed  it  much  less  to  these  rustic  colo- 
nies, self-centred  as  they  are,  than  to  the  German  nobility  of  the 
Baltic  provinces  and  the  German  scientists  invited  to  settle  in 
Petersburgh. 

Rather  different  has  been  the  part  played  by  the  Greco-Slav 
immigrants.  If  they  have  not  yet  quite  become  merged  into  the 
Russian  people,  they  do  not,  like  the  Germans,  form  a  separate 
body  within  the  empire.  The  kinship  of  language  where  Slavs 
are  concerned,  the  unity  of  faith  which  is  a  bond  between  all,  or 
nearly  all,  have  been  powerful  links  between  these  immigrants  and 
their  adopted  country-.  Among  them  are  to  be  met  all  the  Chris- 
tian tribes  of  the  East :  Greeks,  Rumanians,  Serbs,  Dalmatians, 
Bulgarians,  Armenians,  Ruthenians,  former  Turkish  or  Austrian 
subjects,  attracted  of  old  to  Russia  by  political  and  religious  sym- 
pathies. This  emigration,  co-temporary  with  their  first  national 
awakening,  gradually  ceased  parallelly  to  the  political  emancipa- 

*  The  suppression  of  this  exemption  in  1874,  by  the  law  introducing 
universal  military  service,  has  caused  a  number  of  these  colonists  to  emi- 
grate. Many,  however,  after  unsuccessful  attempts  at  settling  in  Brazil  and 
elsewhere,  went  back  to  Russia. 

t  When  we  come  to  the  study  of  Russian  sects,  we  shall  have,  in  dealing 
with  the  Stundists,  to  quote  a  recent  exception  to  this  rule.  See  vol.  iii., 
book  iii.,  ch.  ix. 


48      THE  EMPIRE  OF  THE    TSARS  AND   THE  RUSSIANS. 

tion  of  the  small  oriental  nations  on  their  native  soil.  Most  of 
these  colonies,  organized  like  the  German  ones,  in  villages  and 
districts,  have  settled  preferably  in  the  south  and  in  Crimea.  The 
region  around  Odessa,  before  it  bore  the  name  of  New  Russia, 
received  from  its  Serbian  colonists  that  of  New  Siberia.  Many  of 
these  Orientals  took  in  Crimea  and  the  adjacent  coast-lands,  the 
place  vacated  by  Tatar  or  Nogay  emigrants,  so  that  between  the 
two  empires — the  Russian  and  the  Turkish,  a  double  current  was 
established  of  emigration  and  immigration,  the  one  drawing  to 
itself  the  Christians,  the  other  the  Mussulmans.  These  small  ori- 
ental colonies,  some  of  them  scarcely  inferior  to  the  German  ones 
in  the  matter  of  agriculttu-e,  have  given  their  first  impulse  to  the 
navy  and  to  commerce  ;  they  furnished  to  them  both  merchants 
and  sailors.  The  ports  of  the  Black  and  the  Azof  Seas — Odessa, 
Khersbn,  Mari6pol,  Taganr6g,  are  so  many  former  Greek  cities, 
and  remain  partly  Greek  still. 

Neither  Germans  nor  Orientals,  however,  no  matter  how  great 
their  services,  can  claim  any  large  share  in  the  millions  of  inhabi- 
tants and  the  millions  of  acres  of  cultivated  soil  which  have  been 
added  in  less  than  a  century  to  the  wealth  of  Southern  and 
Eastern  Russia.  The  great  colonizer  of  the  Russian  land  is  the 
Russian  people,  the  mujik.  *  How  many  difl5culties,  what  inferiority 
in  every  branch  are  implied  in  this  seemingly  so  simple  fact,  if 
closely  looked  into  !  Instead  of  the  most  enterprising  men  from 
the  most  advanced  European  states,  as  in  America  or  in  Australia, 
the  agent  is  a  people  that  has  long  been  kept  back  by  nature  and 
history,  serfs  but  yesterday  ;  instead  of  all  political  and  civil 
liberties,  of  the  independence  and  almost  royalty  of  the  individual 
— an  autocratic  state,  a  meddlesome  and  nagging  administration, 
the  solidarity  of  the  commune,  which  binds  man  to  man  and  the 
laborer  to  the  soil.* 

*  They  to  be  pronounced  as  in  French  :  je^  joli ;  the  u  like  oo  in  moor. 

•  This  paragraph  can  scarcely  be  accepted  unconditionally,  at  least  as 
applied  to  the  Russian  people.     It  is  doubtful  whether  too  much  culture, — 


NATURE,    CLIMATE,   AND  SOIL.  49 

The  Russians  have  had  a  twofold  task  set  them,  of  apparently- 
irreconcilable  elements :  to  borrow  civilization  from  Europe  on 
one  side,  and  on  the  other  to  carry  civilization  to  desert  lands. 
They  have  had  a  nation  to  educate,  all  but  virgin  lands  to  break. 
This  task  they  had  to  accomplish  under  conditions  the  most 
repugnant  to  colonial  growth,  burdened  with  standing  armies  and 
a  long  term  of  military  service,  under  a  system  of  strict  centraliza- 
tion and  an  omnipotent  bureaucracy.  It  is  owing  to  these  incon- 
sistencies much  more  than  to  the  inferiority  of  soil  and  clime,  if 
their  development  has  been  less  rapid,  and,  above  all,  less 
productive  than  that  of  Northern  America  ;  that  is  what  has  kept 
European  emigration  away  from  the  steppes  and  will  keep  it 
away  for  ever.  No  matter  that  Russia  owns  on  both  sides  the  Ural 
admirable  land,  which  but  awaits  the  plough — colonists  from  the 
West  wiU  not  look  that  way.  Even  her  neighbors  of  the  Scandi- 
navian North  prefer  the  American  "Far  West"  and  the  wastes 
of  Canada.^ 

developed  liberties,  ready-made  institutions,  the  "royalty  of  the  individual," 
— ^is  a  good  thing  in  the  beginnings  of  colonies.  Colonies  founded  in  this  way 
are  bom  old,  like  the  Chinese  philosopher  Lao-tze,  of  whom  the  legend  has 
it  he  was  bom  eighty  years  old  with  a  flowing  white  beard.  And  they  do 
not  aggrandize  or  strengthen*  the  mother  country.  They  are  separate 
organisms  from  the  first  and  very  soon  assert  their  independence, — if  neces- 
sary, with  arnaed  hand.  See  the  ancient  Greek  colonies  and  the  American 
colonies.  Or  else  such  colonies,  if  even  outwardly  thriving,  are  consumed 
by  a  blight  at  the  core,  they  bear  a  curse  of  moral  depravity,  of  lack  of 
vitality,  of  restlessness  and  inability  to  settle  down  to  the  wholesome,  nor- 
mal, work-a-day  routine  which  builds  up  a  solid  nation  as  well  as  a  healthy, 
prosperous  individual.  See  the  South  American  Republics  of  Latin  race. 
For,  planting  in  rows  full-grown  trees  with  ripe  fruit  on  them  will  never 
make  a  forest  or  an  orchard.  While  the  kind  of  colonization  of  which  Mr. 
Beaulieu  speaks  so  slightingly  is  the  only  kind  that  gives  to  the  state  not  an 
insecure  dependence,  but  a  vigorous  offshoot,  fed  on  the  same  sap,  living  the 
life,  growing  the  growth  of  the  whole.  Secession  is  an  impossibility  :  can  a 
limb  secede  from  its  trunk  ? 

'  Be  it  so  and  may  it  remain  so.  Therein  lies  the  country's  future,  and 
it  does  not  matter  if  we  do  not  live  to  see  it.  The  American  States  cannot 
dispense  with  immigration  ;  but  for  immigration  they  would  not  exist,  and 
their  vital  principle  was,  from  the  beginning,  under  a  great  show  of  gentle- 


50      THE  EMPIRE   OF   THE    TSARS  AND   THE  RUSSIANS. 

Russia,  then,  is  a  recently  colonized  country.  This  is  a  fact 
which  should  not  for  a  moment  be  lost  sight  of.  Many  of  her 
peculiarities,  many  of  her  faults,  private  and  public,  come  from 
this  simple  fact.  This  partly  explains  a  certain  remnant  of  crude- 
ness  in  so  many  cultured  Russians;  for  instance,  the  puzzling 
mixture  of  hyper-refined  tastes  and  savage  instincts,  and  a  certain 
superficiality  in  all  but  the  mere  luxury  of  intellectual  culture  and 
civilization. '  Such  inconsistencies  are  more  or  less  noticeable  among 
the  Americans  and  in  all  ' '  new ' '  countries,  where  civilization, 
being  too  young  and  hasty,  still  has  about  it  something  unbalanced. 

Russia  is  a  colonj-  one  or  two  centuries  old,  and  at  the  same 
time  an  empire  of  a  thousand  years."  She  has  some  affinities  with 
America  and  some  with  Turkey.     This  opposition  alone  gives 

ness  and  moderation,  Conquest, — the  most  ruthless  conquest  that  ever 
Europeans  perpetrated  :  taking  possession  of  a  continent  by  exterminating 
the  only  landlord,  the  native  race.  The  case  is  different  where  a  homo- 
geneous, compact  race  owns  an  area  of  land  too  extensive  for  its  present  use  ; 
it  naturally  considers  it  a  precious  safeguard  for  future  times  ;  for  the  race 
has  vitality  and  it  will  increase  and  expand  and  cover  its  own  land,  never 
fear.  The  times  are  gone  by  for  offering  "  inducements  "  to  foreign  immi- 
gration, and  our  experience  with  our  German  colony  is  not  such  as  to  make 
us  call  for  more.  And  do  not  the  American  States  begin  to  look  apprehen- 
sively on  the  human  tide  that  keeps  rolling  in  across  the  Atlantic  and 
already  take  active  measures  to  stem  it  ?  If  Russia  continues  unattractive 
to  emigrants,  she  will  at  least  have  no  Chinese  question  to  face — and  solved 
such  questions  can  never  be,  only  cut,  more  or  less  cruelly. 

*  A  word  concerning  which  it  were  desirable  to  come  to  a  generally  ac- 
cepted mutual  imderstanding.  As  commonly  understood  just  now,  it 
appears  to  mean  principally  what  house-speculators  call  "  modern  improve- 
ments," mechanical  appliances  of  physical  science  (telephones,  phono- 
graphs, electric  lights)  and — light  opera,  and  to  have  nothing  whatever  to 
do  with  culture  or  the  highest  capacity  for  culture.  The  Khedive  of  Egypt, 
Ismail  Pasha,  returned  home  an  enthusiastic  convert  to  "European  civili- 
zation," announcing  his  intention  to  introduce  it  in  his  dominions,  and, 
on  his  arrival  at  Cairo,  straightway  established  a  cafk-concert  with  the 
"stars"  and  all  belongings  imported  from  France. 

'  Scarcely  an  empire  or  even  a  state.  These  names  cannot  be  given  to 
a  loose  agglomeration  of  principalities,  held  together  merely  by  the  bond 
of  race  and,  as  regards  their  respective  rulers,  the  all  but  fictitious  one  of 
family  "seniorship"  and  precedence.  The  Empire  does  not  trace  its 
existence  beyond  the  close  of  the  fifteenth  century,  when  Ivan  III.  assumed 


NATURE,    CLIMATE,  AND  SOIL.  5 1 

the  key  to  her  national  character  as  well  as  to  her  political  situa- 
tion. It  is  a  country  at  once  new  and  old,  an  ancient,  half 
Asiatic  monarchy,  and  a  young  European  colony  ;  a  double-faced 
Janus,  turned  westward  and  eastward,  one  face  old  and  decrepit, 
the  other  youthful,  nay  almost  boyish." 

This  sort  of  duality  is  the  principle  which  underlies  the  con- 
trasts that  strike  us  in  Russian  life  everywhere — contrasts  so 
frequent  as  to  have  become  the  rule  and  to  justify  us  in  saying 
that,  in  Russia,  contradiction  might  be  erected  into  a  law.  Every- 
thing has  worked  towards  that  result :  the  geographical  situation 
between  Europe  and  Asia  astride  on  the  Ural ;  the  mixture  of 
ill-amalgamated  races  ;  an  historical  past  claimed  by  two  worlds, 
and  made  of  violently  opposed  phases.  This  law  of  contrasts 
rules  everything.  Hence  the  variety  of  judgments  pronounced 
on  Russia,  and  generally  so  false  only  because  showing  up  one 
side  alone.  This  law  of  contrasts  turns  up  everywhere — ^in 
society,  owing  to  the  deep  chasm  that  divides  the  higher 
from  the  lower  classes;  in  politics  and  the  administration; 
because  of  slight  leanings  towards  liberalism  in  the  laws, 
and  the  stationary  inertness  of  habit ;  it  shows  even  in  the 
individual, — in  his  ideas,  his  feelings,  his  manner.  Contrast 
lies  in  both  substance  and  form,  in  the  man  as  in  the  nation; 
you  discover  it  in  time  in  all  things ;  it  strikes  you  at  the  first 
glance  in  the  clothes,  in  the  houses,  in  those  wooden  cities  with 
wide  parallel  streets,  so  similar  to  the  new  cities  of  America  and 
not  unlike  the  stopping-places  along  the  steamer  route  in  the  East. 

This  duality,  which  sways  all  the  conditions  of  Russian  life, 
also  directly  influences  Russia's  material  and  political  growth  as 

Hhe  double-headed  eagle  of  Byzance,  the  extinct  Empire  of  the  East  and  the 
title  of  *'  Caesar," — Tsesar,  according  to  the  pronunciation  still  in  use  in  the 
Russian  schools,  whence — Tsar. 

'^  Old,  Russia  never  can  be  called  on  any  account.  Whatever  of  "old" 
and  even  "decrepit"  there  may  be  about  her,  is  what  came  to  her  from 
Byzance,  whose  effete  and  doting  age  made  her  but  an  indifferent  associate 
and  mentor  to  a  hardy,  doughty  young  nation  in  her  teens. 


52      THE  EMPIRE  OF  THE    TSARS  AND  THE  RUSSIANS. 

well  as  her  moral  development.  At  once  a  military  monarchy 
and  a  young  colony,  she  has  the  weakness  peculiar  to  both  without 
the  full  strength  of  either.  Belonging  to  a  new  world,  having 
deserts  to  people,  Russia,  owing  to  her  contact  with  Europe,  is 
subject  to  the  same  burdens,  military  and  financial,  that  the  old 
crowded  and  civilized  states  have  borne  for  ages.  When,  under 
President  I,incoln,  the  United  States  were  threatened  with  seces- 
sion, what  they  had  reason  to  dread  most  was  not  a  curtailing  of 
their  territory,  it  was  a  radical  change  in  their  whole  economical 
and  political  existence,  which  would  have  been  caused  by  the 
creation  of  two  rival  powers  on  the  same  continent. 

Geography  has  placed  Russia  in  the  very  position  into  which 
the  secession  of  the  South  or  the  West  would  have  forced  the 
United  States.  Isolated  from  Europe  by  an  ocean,  as  America  is, 
she  would  have  had  a  far  readier  and  safer  development ;  she  need 
not  then  have  divided  her  eflforts  between  two  contradictory  tasks. 
The  discomforts  of  such  a  material  situation  are  singularly  in- 
creased for  Russia  by  moral  disadvantages :  she  has  before  her 
the  tasks  of  both  Europe  and  America  at  once,  and  in  her  inhabi- 
tants she  possesses  tools  inferior  in  quality  to  those  of  both.  She 
is  like  an  actor  who  was  compelled  to  appear  on  the  stage  before 
he  could  learn  his  part,  or  to  a  man  whose  education  had  been 
neglected  in  his  childhood  and  who  is  forced  to  complete  it  in  the 
midst  of  the  labor  and  strife  of  manhood." 

The  Russians  are  a  people  in  the  act  of  getting  itself  into 
shape,    and  that  from  the  moral  as  well  as  the  material  stand- 

"  Russia  is  behindhand  not  from  lack  of  gifts,  but  from  the  simple  fact 
that  she  is  the  youngest  of  the  European  family — a  fact  of  which  not  even 
our  best  friends  seem  willing  to  give  us  the  benefit.  She  can  answer  most 
accusations  bearing  on  such  shortcomings  in  the  words  of  Pitt  when,  to 
attacks  from  the  ministerial  bench  on  account  of  his  youth,  he  serenely 
replied  :  "  I  plead  guilty  to  the  accusation,  but  it  is  a  fault  that  will  mend 
itself."  And  it  is  not  only  unjust  but  cruel  to  assert  like  that,  as  a  matter  of 
course,  that  the  Russian  people,  as  tools  of  civilization,  are  "  of  inferior  quali- 
ty." The  way  in  which  they  are  every  day  coming  to  the  front  in  all  branches 
of  culture,  science  and  art  both,  is  more  eloquent  than  any  words  in  defence. 


NATURE,    CLIMATE,  AND  SOIL.  53 

point.  In  no  respect  can  they,  without  injustice,  be  compared 
with  the  nations  of  Western  Europe.  Towards  the  latter,  Russia 
stands  in  the  position  of  an  army  just  forming  and  still  scattered, 
who  should  have  to  face  an  army  with  full  numbers  and  con- 
centrated corps.  She  may  be  weak  to-day  before  nations  who,  in 
a  hundred  years  from  now,  will  be  unable  to  cope  with  her.  In 
this  respect,  the  Bulgarian  war  has  not  erased  the  impressions 
left  by  the  Crimean  war.  To  this  day,  Russia's  power  is  not  in 
proportion  to  her  bulk,  nor  to  her  population.  The  Russians 
know  this  ;  but  they  also  know  that  time  will  raise  their  power 
to  the  level  of  the  size  of  their  territory.* 

*  See  France,  Russia,  and  Europe.     Calmann  I/4vy,  1888. 


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RACES  AND  NATIONALITY. 


CHAPTER  I. 

Are  the  Russian  People  a  Bnropean  People  ? — Is  there  in  Russia  a  Homo- 
geneous Nationality? — Interest  Attaching  to  these  Questions — The 
Ethnographical  Museum  at  Moscow — Causes  of  the  Multiplicity  of 
Races  on  this  Uniform  Land — Reasons  why  their  Fusion  is  not  yet  Com- 
pleted— How  it  is  that  Ethnographical  Maps  can  Furnish  only 
InsuflBcient  Data. 

Wkre  Russia  a  lately  discovered  virgin  land,  devoid  of  jwpu- 
lation,  or  roamed  over  only  by  a  few  nomadic  tribes,  she  would 
soon  oflFer  to  the  world  the  same  spectacle  as  the  United  States  or 
Australia.  She  would  rank  with  those  countries  where  civilization, 
having  left  behind  her  the  old  institutions  which  protected  her 
infancy,  opens  out  for  herself,  on  a  new  soil,  a  wider  and  more 
independent  career.  I<eft  entirely  to  European  civilization,  Russia 
would  quickly  have  rivalled  America,  for — according  to  a  remark 
made  by  Adam  Smith  as  early  as  the  eighteenth  century — nothing, 
once  the  foundations  are  solidly  laid,  can  equal  the  rapidly  increas- 
ing prosperity  of  a  colony  which,  in  a  free  land,  is  at  liberty  to 
construct  an  entirely  new  building.  What  makes  Russia's 
inferiority  is  her  elderly  population,  with  its  antiquated  customs 
and  old  traditions ;  it  is  this  indigenous  population  which,  by 
shutting  out  immigration  from  the  West,  robs  her  of  the 
advantages  of  the  usual  marvellous  growth  of  colonies. ' 

'  Once  for  all,  we  must  protest  against  this  off-hand  acceptation  of 
"Russia's  inferiority"  as  a  thing  understood,  not  even  needing  proof  or 

54 


RACES  A ND  NA  TIONA LITY.  55 

Crudely  contrasting  with  Western  Europe,  the  Russian  land  was 
unfit  to  be  the  cradle  of  European  culture,  but  is  perfectly  fit  to 
receive  it.  Can  the  same  be  said  of  the  different  peoples  that 
occupy  those  vast  plains?  Physical  conditions  cannot  alone 
determine  a  country's  fate ;  in  fact  they  can  do  nothing  with- 
out man,  without  the  race  that  dwells  there.  Nature  has  marked 
Russia  for  the  seat  of  a  great  empire  ;  but  has  history'  placed  there 
a  people  capable  of  making  a  great  nation  ?  We  must  ask  the 
same  question  about  the  people  as  about  the  country.  Does  it 
belong  to  Europe  or  Asia  ?  Has  it  a  kinship  with  us,  giving  it 
an  inborn  aptitude  for  our  civilization  ?  or  is  it  an  alien  in  the 
European  family,  in  blood  as  well  as  education,  and  condemned 
from  its  birth  to  remain  an  Asiatic  people  under  the  clothes  bor- 
rowed from  Europe  ? 

This  question  which  the  Russians,  as  well  as  their  antagonists, 
have  turned  in  and  out  and  from  all  sides  with  equal  passion, 
amounts  to  nothing  more  nor  less  than  the  question  whether  or  no 
the  Russian  people  are  capable  of  civilization  at  all.  In  our  times, 
ethnography  and  the  study  of  races  has  been  made  in  certain 
countries  to  play  a  most  untoward  and  equivocal  part,  even  to 
being  deferred  to  in  the  highest  instance  for  judgment  in  ques- 
tions of  nationality,  which,  in  any  case,  ethnography  never  could 
settle  by  itself.  These  exaggerations,  prompted  by  self-interest, 
must  not  induce  us  to  lose  out  of  sight  the  real  bearing  of 
such  studies.     In  order  to  know  a  people,  a  young  people  too, 


discussion.  Once  for  all  let  it  be  understood  at  last, — what  is  so  plain  as  to 
•'put  out  one's  eyes,"  in  the  graphic  French  phrase,  cela  crhve  les yeux, — 
that  Russia  is  inferior  in  the  way  that  the  youngest  of  a  family,  who  is  not 
yet  out  of  college,  is  to  his  elderly  brothers  who  have  had  the  time  and 
opportunity  to  make  their  mark  in  the  world.  And  it  is  notorious  how 
often  the  youngest  is  the  most  gifted  ;  then,  adding  to  his  own  attainments 
his  elders'  experience,  the  future  is  his  when  he  survives  them,  as,  in  the 
course  of  nature,  he  must.  There  is  nowadays  but  one  opinion  on  the 
superior  intellectual  endowments  of  the  individual  Russians ;  how  then  can 
their  country  be  inferior?  As  to  the  blessings  of  immigration,  see  preced- 
ing chapter,  note  7. 


56      THE  EMPIRE  OF  THE    TSARS  AND   THE  RUSSIANS. 

which  has  had  no  chance  as  yet  to  manifest  its  own  genius,*  a 
knowledge  of  the  elements  of  which  it  is  composed,  of  the  races 
from  which  it  has  issued,  is  imperative.  To  propound  such  a 
problem  with  regard  to  Russia  amounts  to  asking  whether  Peter 
the  Great  could  succeed  in  grafting  Western  civilization  on  the 
Moscovite  wilding  or  whether,  for  lack  of  European  sap,  it 
cannot  "take  "  on  the  alien  trunk.' 

Side  by  side  with  this  question  of  the  filiation  and  intrinsic 
value  of  the  Russian  people,  another  arises,  quite  as  important  to 
the  philosopher  as  to  the  politician  :  that  of  the  degree  of  cohesion 
possible  to  so  vast  an  empire.  The  physical  unity  of  the  land  is 
not  suflScient  to  ensure  political  unity,  there  goes  to  that  also  the 
material  and  moral  vmion  of  the  populations,  a  certain  kinship  of 
blood  or  brain,  without  which  national  unity  is  impossible.  Is 
there  in  Russia,  as  in  France  or  Italy,  a  compact  nationality, 
strongly  cemented  by  history, — or  is  it,  like  Turkey  till  very 
lately  and  Austria  to  this  day,  a  patchwork  of  heterogeneous 
peoples,  each  with  traditions  and  interests  of  its  own  ? 

*  Here  the  fact  of  its  being  '■'^  &  young  people,"  laboring  under  the  difl&- 
culties  peculiar  to  youth  alone,  is  admitted  unconditionally.  Is  there  not  a 
slight  inconsistency  in  speaking  almost  in  the  same  breath  (see  the  first 
paragraph)  of  Russia's  "  elderly  population  "  as  a  drawback  and  a  source  of 
"  inferiority  "  too  ?  This  unconscious  fluctuation  occurs  repeatedly  in  the 
present  volume. 

*  Why  should  the  Western  type  of  civilization — "  our  civilization  " — be 
the  only  type  to  be  aimed  at  ?  and  indeed — see  a  few  lines  higher — the  only 
possible  one  at  all,  so  that,  as  the  question  is  plainly  put,  if  the  Russian 
people  turn  out  incapable  or  unwilling  to  be  exactly  like  the  French,  the 
Germans,  the  English,  they  are  to  be  set  down  "incapable  of  civilization  " 
generally  ?  Why — to  keep  up  a  simile  which  always  fits — Why  should  the 
growing  young  giant's  proudest  ambition  be  to  wear  out  his  elders'  old 
clothes  or  buy,  at  a  high  price,  ready-made  ones  of  precisely  the  same  cut 
and  material,  though  they  are  a  manifest  misfit  and  so  much  too  tight 
that  at  each  movement  of  his  vigorous  limbs  they  will  crack  at  all  the 
seams?  Let  him  profit  by  their  taste  and  experience  so  far  as  to  take 
from  their  apparel  whatever  suits  his  figure  and  conditions  of  life 
and  carefully  modify  the  cut  better  to  adapt  it  to  both  and  secure  free- 
dom of  movements,  moreover  leaving  ample  margin  for  growth  and  final 
development. 


RACES  AND  NATIONALITY.  57 

The  Russian  soil  is  made  for  unity.  Nowhere  do  we  find  so 
vast  an  area  so  thoroughly  homogeneous  ;  at  the  same  time,  no- 
where do  we  find  so  many  different  races.  The  contrast  which 
appears  everywhere  in  Russia  is  most  striking  in  this  respect. 
The  most  uniform  of  geographical  areas  is  occupied  by  the  most 
motley  human  families.  Races,  peoples,  tribes,  are  all  tangled 
together  ad  infinitum,  and  their  diversities  are  brought  out  and 
made  conspicuous  by  the  diversity  of  their  modes  of  life,  their 
languages,  their  religions.  Among  them  are  found  all  the  ChriS' 
tian  confessions  :  Greek  Orthodox,  Armenians,  Catholics,  Protes* 
tants,  sundry  sects  unknown  to  the  West ;  all  the  beliefs  of  Asia 
face  to  face  with  those  of  Europe  ;  Jews — Talmudists,  and  Kara- 
ites ;  Mahometans — Sunnites  and  Shiites  ;  Buddhists,  Shamanites, 
and  heathens  of  all  descriptions.  The  bare  enumeration  of  the 
various  races  encountered  in  European  Russia  is  something  Mght- 
fill — no  less  than  twenty  ;  and  if  no  group,  no  smallest  tribe  is  to 
be  overlooked,  this  figure  would  have  to  be  doubled,  nay,  trebled. 

We  possess  several  ethnographical  maps  of  Russia.  One  of 
these,  by  Mr.  Rittich,  is  both  recent  and  excellent.  But  the 
Russians  have  done  more  :  in  the  Dashkofi"  Museum,  founded  in 
Moscow  on  occasion  of  the  Slavic  Congress  in  1867,  they  have 
attempted  to  give  a  presentation  at  once  scientific  and  picturesque, 
something  like  an  animated  map,  of  the  various  peoples  of  the 
Empire.  By  means  of  mannikins  of  life-size  and  of  waxen  fig- 
ures moulded  after  the  exactest  casts  from  nature,  the  peoples  and 
tribes  of  Russia  have  been  assembled  there,  in  all  the  variety  of 
their  several  types  and  garbs.  On  the  north  side  of  the  vast  hall, 
which  is  laid  out  after  the  fashion  of  a  map,  next  to  the  Tung^z, 
the  YakM,  the  Buri^t  of  Siberia,  we  see,  in  his  garments  of  rein- 
deer hide,  the  Samoyed,  who  recalls  the  Esquimau,  and  the 
I^app,  who  puts  one  in  mind  of  the  Mongol.  I^wer  down,  to 
the  west,  come  the  Finn  peasant  of  Finland,  and  the  Ehst 
of  the  Baltic  provinces,  both  of  them  betraying,  by  their  flattened 
fiaces,  a  distant  kinship  with  the  I^app  and  the  Samoyed.    On 


58      THE  EMPIRE   OF   THE    TSARS  AND    THE  RUSSIANS. 

the  eastern  side  we  behold  representatives  of  other  groups  of  the 
Finnic  race  scattered  over  the  basin  of  the  Volga,  and  showing 
features  less  and  less  European,  less  and  less  noble  :  Permians, 
Voti^ks,  Tcheremiss,  Mordvins  and  Tchuv^h,  in  the  midst  of 
whom  a  young  Tatar  woman  from  Kazin,  disrobed  of  her  veil, 
is  noticeable  for  her  Oriental  beauty.  Facing  this  group,  on  the 
western  side,  are  the  Lett,  Samogitian,  and  lyithuanian  peasants, 
and  at  last  the  Bielor^ss, — i.  e.,  the  denizen  of  Western  or  White 
Russia,  square-faced,  in  striking  contrast  to  a  Jewish  tradesman 
and  a  Jewish  mechanic,  with  their  long  faces  and  sharp,  thin 
noses. 

In  the  middle  of  the  hall,  on  a  wide  platform,  is  enthroned  the 
master  of  the  empire,  the  "  Velikoriass  "  (Great- Russian),  in  all 
the  variety  of  his  diflFerent  crafts  and  provincial  costumes ;  the  men 
in  high  top-boots,  or  low,  slipper-like  lapti,  plaited  of  tree-bast, 
in  the  red  shirt  or  long-skirted  kaftan;  the  women  in  rich  sarafhns, 
with  their  diadem-shaped  kokbshniks.  Below  the  "  Velikortiss  " 
comes  the  "  Malor6ss "  (Little- Russian),  with  more  refined 
features,  garments  of  more  elegant  cut  and  material ;  the  men 
wear  high  sheepskin  caps,  the  girls  flowers  interlaced  with  rib- 
bons. Behind  the  Little-Russians  appear  the  Poles,  then,  from 
west  to  east,  all  the  numerous  tribes  of  the  south  of  the  empire  : 
a  Moldavian  couple  from  Bessarabia,  a  murzh  or  Tatar  prince 
from  the  Crimea,  with  his  neighbor,  a  Tsigctn  (gypsy)  beggar,  a 
Karaite  bride,  a  daughter  of  one  of  those  Jews,  enemies  of 
the  others,  who  pretend  to  be  descended  from  the  ten  tribes  trans- 
ported by  Nebuchadnezzar, — lastly  two  German  colonists  from 
New  Russia  or  the  Lower  Volga,  as  different  from  the  Russians  to 
this  day,  in  type  and  garb,  as  on  the  day  of  their  immigration. 

In  the  southwestern  portion  of  the  hall  we  are  met  by  the 
Mussulman  and  Buddhist  tribes  of  the  oriental  steppes,  with  their 
Asiatic  features  and  resplendent  costumes :  the  Kirghiz  with  his 
tall,  pointed  cap,  Kalm>^ks  from  the  governments  of  Stavrbpol 
and  Astrakhan,  with  narrow-slit  eyes,  yellow-skinned,  wearing 


RACES  AND  NATIONALITY.  5^ 

the  beshmet  of  silk  or  velvet  in  the  tenderest  colors.  Next  to 
these  a  Bashkir  woman  from  Orenburg  or  Ufa,  in  her  red  cloth 
robe — khal^t — and  head-dress  fringed  with  coins.  In  the  extreme 
south  we  greet  the  tribes  of  the  Caucasus,  the  handsomest  in  the 
world  as  to  features,  the  most  elegant  as  to  dress.  Here  an  Armen- 
ian merchant  in  plain  black  kafthn  ;  further  a  Tcherkess  (Circas- 
sian) in  crimson  morocco  shoes,  his  kafthn  bristling  with  cartridge 
pockets  on  the  breast,  and  the  camel's-hair  bashlik  slung  round 
his  neck  ;  next,  a  Gruzin  (Georgian)  with  lapti  woven  of  leather 
straps,  the  arkkalouk,*  and  the  tchokka  or  surcoat  with  the  long  em- 
broidered sleeves,  open  in  front ;  a  Mingrelian  woman  in  a  gown 
of  light-blue  silk  and  the  long  veil  of  transparent  muslin,  and  a 
Kurd  woman  from  the  banks  of  the  Araxus,  in  her  silken  timic  and 
wide  crimson  satin  trousers,  a  ring  passed  through  her  nose  ;  the 
Armenian  woman  in  a  green  robe — khalht, — wrapt  up  in  one  of 
those  immense  veils  which  the  women  of  the  Caucasus  enshroud 
themselves  in  to  walk  abroad ;  the  Gruzinka  (Georgian  woman) 
in  a  black  satin  petticoat  with  lavender  bodice,  and  a  band  of 
brocade  round  her  head,  dances  as  she  brandishes  a  tambourine. 
At  the  farthest  end  of  the  great  hall,  in  a  dark  niche,  a  group  of 
half-naked  Ghebers  from  Baku,  the  last  survivors  of  the  sect,  wor- 
ship the  sacred  fire. 

The  impression  produced  by  this  museum,  where  one  single 
state  exhibits  so  many  human  types,  a  plain  ethnographical  map 
would  not  produce  in  the  same  degree.  The  colors  hardly  have 
shadings  enough  to  spare  one  to  each  tribe ;  by  their  motley  color- 
ing, as  by  the  puzzling  intricacy  of  their  lines  they  recall  the 
geological  maps  of  countries  of  the  most  complicated  formations. 
It  seems,  at  the  first  glance,  as  though  in  this  coimtry,  where  land 
and  inanimate  nature  show  such  unity,  all  is  confusion  in  the  races 
of  men. 

*  A  sort  of  close-fitting  doublet,  with  short  but  rather  ample,  gathered 
skirts.  A  becoming  and  comfortable  garment,  often  worn,  of  soft  quilted 
silk,  by  gentlemen  as  home  costume. 


6o      THE  EMPIRE  OF  THE    TSARS  AND   THE  RUSSIANS. 

The  configuration  of  the  Russian  soil  accounts  for  this  quan- 
tity and  diversity  of  races,  apparently  so  little  in  harmony  with  it. 
Having  no  well-defined  boundary  line  either  to  the  east  or  west, 
Russia  has  always  stood  wide  open  to  all  invasions  ;  she  was  the 
highway  of  all  the  migrations  from  Asia  into  Europe.  Nowhere 
have  the  strata  of  human  alluvions  been  more  numerous,  nowhere 
more  mixed,  more  broken  and  disjointed,  than  on  this  smooth, 
flat  bed  where  each  wave,  as  it  was  pressed  upon  and  pushed  on 
from  the  rear  by  the  following  one,  met  no  obstacle  ahead,  save  in 
the  wave  that  had  preceded  it.  Even  as  recently  as  in  historical 
times,  it  were  hard  to  enumerate  the  people  that  have  settled 
on  Russian  land  and  established  there  more  or  less  lasting  empires 
— Scyth,  Sarmatian,  Goth,  Avar,  Bulgar,  Ongre  or  Hungarian, 
Khaz^r,  Petchen^g,  I^ithuanian,  Mongol,  Tatar, — to  say  nothing 
of  the  migrations  of  the  Celts  and  Teutons  of  old,  and  others, 
whose  very  name  has  perished,  but  who,  obscure  as  they  were, 
may  have  left  in  the  population  a  trace,  undiscoverable  at  this  day. 

If  the  configuration  of  the  country  left  Russia  open  to  invasion, 
the  structure  of  the  soil  made  it  impossible  to  the  invaders  to 
settle  down  on  it  in  organized  nations,  independent  of  one  another. 
The  multiplicity  of  races  and  tribes  is  not  the  consequence  of  a 
slow  working  of  physical  causes,  but  an  historical  heirloom.  Set- 
ting aside  the  icy  fields  of  the  north,  where  none  but  hunting 
tribes  can  exist, — also  the  sandy  and  salt  steppes  of  the  southeast, 
impracticable  to  any  but  pastoral  nomads,  this  complexity  of  races 
and  tribes,  far  fi-om  being  a  result  of  their  adaptation  to  the  soil, 
far  from  being  in  harmony  with  their  physical  surroundings,  is  in 
direct  opposition  to  it.  The  natural  tendency  of  the  land  was  not 
to  diversify  and  break  up  races,  but  to  bring  them  together  to 
unity.  To  all  these  different  peoples  the  country  refiised  the 
comfort  of  boundaries  within  which  they  might  have  intrenched 
themselves,  formed  groups,  led  an  isolated  existence. 

In  the  immense  quadrilateral  comprised  between  the  Glacial 
Ocean  and  the  Black  Sea,  the  Baltic  and  the  Ural,  there  is  not  a 


RACES  AND  NATIONALITY.  6l 

mountain,  not  one  of  the  things  that  divide,  that  apportion.  On 
this  even  surface  the  various  races  have  been  left  to  scatter  appar- 
ently at  random,  not  unlike  the  waters,  which  find  no  ridge  or  shed 
to  separate  from,  no  banks  to  contain  them.  Even  when  diversity 
of  customs,  religion,  language,  precluded  their  mixing,  they  were 
compelled  to  live  side  by  side,  to  cross,  to  interpenetrate  one 
another  in  every  possible  way,  just  as  rivers  empty  themselves  into 
one  and  the  same  bed  and,  at  their  confluent,  roll  their  waters  in 
the  same  current  without  ever  confounding  them.  Thus  it  is, 
that,  being  scattered  yet  contiguous,  frequently  wedged  into  one 
another,  the  peoples  and  tribes  of  Russia  have  not  been  able  to 
attain  full  national  individuaHty.  Exhausted  in  the  act  of  spread- 
ing over  too  great  expanses,  or  thinned  down  to  the  merest  frag- 
ments, broken  up  into  bits,  one  might  say,  all  these  races  have 
easily  allowed  themselves  to  be  gathered  under  one  rule,  and  once 
so  gathered,  were  more  rapidly  unified  and  merged  into  one 
another.  From  this  fusion,  begun  centuries  ago,  under  the  sway 
of  Christianity  and  Moscovite  sovereignty,  sprang  the  Russian 
people,  this  mass  of  sixty-five  to  seventy  millions  of  men,  which, 
compared  to  the  other  populations,  assumes  the  appearance  of  a 
sea  eating  away  its  own  shores,  a  sea  strewed  with  islets  that 
crumble  away  in  its  midst. 

This  people  that  calls  itself  Russian, — ^what  is  its  filiation?. 
Occupying,  as  it  does,  the  centre  of  the  empire,  environed  by  the 
various  races  which  it  has  pushed  towards  the  extremities,  it  still 
contains  numerous  Finn  and  Tatar  patches,  persistent  witnesses 
to  the  extent  of  the  area  once  upon  a  time  covered  by  similar 
tribes.  In  their  ethnographic  maps,  the  Russians  represent  the 
various  populations  in  conformity  to  their  local  distribution  at  the 
present  day.  An  external  sign — ^language — is  taken  for  a  stand- 
ard, and  all  are  accounted  Russian  or  Slav  who  speak  the  Russian 
tongue.  No  classifying  method  can  be  simpler ;  only  it  should 
not  be  forgotten  that  such  a  classification  proves  nothing  as  to  the 
origin  of  a  people,  and  that,  in  the  matter  of  race,  language  is  of 


62       THE  EMPIRE   OF   THE    TSARS  AND   THE  RUSSIANS. 

all  signs  the  most  deceptive.  In  order  to  adopt  the  Russian 
speech,  Finn  or  Tatar  tribes,  in  the  act  of  "  russification,"  do  not 
infuse  into  their  veins  Slavic  blood,  any  more  than  the  Celts  or  the 
Gauls  or  the  Iberians  of  Spain  borrowed  Latin  blood  along  with 
Latin  speech.  From  the  point  of  view  of  ethnographic  gene- 
alogy, these  maps,  based  exclusively  on  language,  bring  data,  not 
results.  For  a  research  of  this  sort,  it  is  necessary  to  collect  far 
more  complex  elements  ;  before  we  turn  to  philology,  we  should 
consult  anthropology,  /.  e.,  the  physical  constitution,  the  features, 
nay,  the  structure  of  the  skeleton  of  each  given  type  of  the  inhabi- 
tants, all  that  they  have  inherited  directly  from  their  remotest 
ancestors  ;  and,  unfortunately,  tjrpes  are  not  to  be  numbered  and 
classified  with  the  same  precision  as  languages  and  religions. 

However,  what  matters  most  in  an  attempt  to  determine  the 
place  belonging  to  the  Russians  amidst  the  human  family,  is  not 
so  much  the  actual  distribution  of  the  various  races,  as  the  com- 
position of  the  Russian  nationality,  which  tends  to  swallow  up  all 
the  others.  What  part  in  the  formation  of  this  people  had  the 
various  elements  of  which,  in  and  around  it,  we  still  behold  the 
scattered  traces  ?  And — ^to  propound  the  main  question,  as  it  is 
so  often  propounded  by  Russia's  foes — is  the  Russian  people  at 
bottom  European  or  Asiatic  ?  Is  it  Slav,  brother  and  neighbor 
of  the  Latin  and  the  Teuton,  and,  by  force  of  the  same  blood, 
called  to  analogous  civilization?  or — ^is  it  Turanian  (Tatar  or 
Mongol),  fated  by  its  constitution  never  to  take  more  than  the 
forms  of  a  culture  alien  to  its  race  ?  If  this  problem  has  received 
the  most  contradictory  solutions,  the  reason  lies  in  the  fact  that 
it  has  been  debated  by  passion,  by  grudge,  by  national  pride, 
more  than  by  study  and  observation. 


BOOK  II.     CHAPTER  II. 

The  Three  Chief  Ethnic  Elements  of  Russia — The  Finns — Are  they  an 
Element  that  Has  no  Parallel  in  Western  Europe? — Diversity  and 
Isolation  of  such  Finn  Groups  as  Still  Survive — Their  Part  in  the 
Formation  of  the  Russian  People — The  Russian  Type  and  the  Finn 
Stamp — Is  this  Relationship  a  Cause  of  Inferiority  for  Russia? — 
Capacity  of  the  Finns  for  Civilization. 

Out  of  the  apparent  chaos  of  Russian  ethnology  three  main 
elements — Finn,  Tatar,  Slav — clearly  emerge,  the  last  having 
by  this  time  in  a  great  measure  absorbed  the  other  two.  Setting 
aside  the  three  or  four  millions  of  Jews  in  the  West,  the  eight  or 
nine  hundred  thousand  Rumanians  in  Bessarabia,  and  one  million 
at  least  of  Germans,  scattered  from  north  to  south, — setting  aside 
also  the  Kalm5i'ks  of  the  steppe  of  the  Lower  Volga  ;  the  Tchet- 
chens,  the  Lezghians,  the  Armenians,  and  the  entire  Babel  of 
the  Caucasus, — all  the  peoples  or  tribes  that  have  invaded  Russia 
in  the  past,  all  those  that  inhabit  her  to-day,  can  be  traced  to  one 
of  these  three  races.  As  far  back  as  we  may  pursue  history, 
representatives  of  each  of  these  three  groups  are  found,  imder  one 
name  or  another,  on  Russian  soil,  and  their  fusion  is  not  even  yet 
so  complete  as  to  conceal  from  sight  the  distinctive  traits  of  each, 
or  the  area  on  which  they  respectively  held  their  sway. 

The  Finn  or  Tchud  race  *  seems  to  have  in  olden  times  occu- 
pied the  greater  part  of  the  territory  we  nowadays  call  Russia. 

*  Tchud,  following  the  Slav  etymology,  would  mean  "  monsters,  won- 
ders," or  "strangers."  The  name  may  possibly  contain  an  allusion  to  the 
"wonders"  done  by  sorcerers,  who  enjoyed  great  renown  everywhere 
among  the  Finns. 

63 


64      THE  EMPIRE   OF   THE    TSARS  AND  THE  RUSSIANS. 

It  is  manifestly  not  of  Aryan  or  Indo-European  stock,  from  which, 
jointly  with  the  Celts  and  the  Latins,  the  Germans  and  the  Slavs, 
most  peoples  of  Europe  have  sprung.  Ethnological  classifications 
generally  place  the  Finns  in  a  more  or  less  extensive  group, 
labelled  "Turanian,  Allophyl,  Mongolian,  Mongoloid," — all  more 
or  less  correct  designations  of  a  frame  with  wavering  outline, 
which  at  times  recalls  a  sort  of  "  what-not"  into  which  philolo- 
gists and  anthropologists  cast  any  people  of  Europe  or  Asia  they 
did  not  succeed  in  classing  with  either  the  Aryans  or  the  Semites. 
Within  the  too  extensive  group  which,  from  the  Pacific  to  Hun- 
gary, comprises  so  many  human  families,  the  Finns  mostly  are 
connected  with  a  branch  known  under  the  name  of  Uralo- Altaic, 
because  the  space  between  the  mountain  chains  of  the  Ural  and 
the  Altai  seems  to  have  been  the  starting-point  of  the  peoples 
belonging  to  this  family.  The  Mongols  proper,  together  with 
the  Tatars,  are  usually  placed  side  by  side  in  this  Uralo-Altaic 
group,  which,  on  the  contrary,  rejects  the  Chinese  and  the  nations 
of  Eastern  Asia.  This  classification  appears  best  to  fit  the  facts  ; 
only  it  is  to  be  noted  that,  regarding  the  two  sciences  on  which 
are  based  all  ethnographic  studies, — philology  and  anthropology, 
this  group  is  far  from  offering  the  same  homogeneousness  as 
the  Aryan  and  Semitic  groups.  The  relationship  between  its 
different  branches  is  far  less  obvious,  less  intimate,  than  that 
between  Latin  and  German,  and  appears  far  more  remote  than 
that  between  the  Brahman  or  the  Gheber  of  India,  and  the  Celt 
of  Scotland  or  Bretagne  ;  at  bottom  it  is  hardly  closer  than  be- 
tween the  Indo-European  and  the  Semite. 

From  the  philological  point  of  view,  the  Uralo-Altaic  or  Tura- 
nian race  is  distinguished  by  agglutinative  languages,  i.  e. ,  such 
as  form  their  declensions  and  conjugations  by  mere  juxtaposi- 
tion instead  of  combining  and  merging  into  one  another  the  root 
and  the  desinences  tmtil  they  are  unrecognizable,  as  in  our 
flexional  languages.  These  agglutinative  languages  which.  Max 
Miiller  tells  us,  characterize  nomadic  peoples,  always  compelled 


RACES  AND  NATIONALITY.  65 

by  their  roaming  life  to  guard  against  any  alteration  of  the  words, 
do  not  show  such  intimate  mutual  relations  as  do  the  Aryan  or 
Semitic  idioms,  a  fact  the  more  remarkable,  that,  owing  to  the 
absence  of  flexion,  they  would  seem  to  be  less  susceptible  of  cor- 
ruptions and  variations.  Their  relationship,  instead  of  showing 
at  once  in  the  unity  of  roots  and  in  the  concordance  of  grammati- 
cal forms,  is  limited  to  similarities  in  structure  and  syntactical 
proceedings,  so  that  the  flliation  between  them  is  more  doubtful, 
more  difficult  to  trace. 

From  the  anthropological  point  of  view,  the  unity  of  this  vast 
group  is  possibly  still  less  firmly  established,  the  affinity  still 
looser.  The  external,  superficial  characteristics  by  which  other 
races  are  easily  known — ^the  color  of  the  skin,  the  eyes,  the  hair, 
are  unreliable  guides  on  this  ground,  and  separate  many  Finn 
tribes.  The  anatomical  characteristics  are  the  only  ones  that  can 
apply  to  all  the  branches  of  the  Uralo- Altaic  trunk ;  and  even 
those,  essential  ones  too,  vary  greatly  in  some  Finn  tribes.  The 
most  important  ones  are  supplied  by  the  shape  of  the  head,  and 
of  these  the  most  general  and  persistent  one  is  the  flattening  of 
the  face  and  the  high  cheek-bones.  And  yet,  within  the  Finn 
family  alone,  these  Mongolian  survivals  are  found  in  very  dijfferent 
degrees — striking  and  well-defined  in  some  tribes, — the  I^apps,  for 
instance, — ^very  much  weakened  and  modified  in  others,  especially 
the  Finns  of  Finland. 

It  is  to  be  noted  that  these  craniological  characteristics  as  well 
as  others,  even  less  favorable,  as  a  certain  prognatism  or  promi- 
nence of  the  jaws,  have  been  encountered  in  many  of  the  old 
populations  of  Europe,  whose  traces  have  lately  been  discovered 
by  prehistoric  archaeology.  Most  htunan  tribes  of  the  unpolished 
stone  age  and  especially  of  the  quaternary  epoch,  the  remnants 
of  which  have  been  unearthed  in  the  caves  of  Western  Europe, 
appear  to  have  belonged  to  these  Mongolian  races  among  which 
the  Finns  are  classed,  or  to  neighboring  races.     These  primitive 

tribes  appear  to  have  occupied  all  of  the  north  and  centre  of 
s 


66      THE  EMPIRE  OF  THE    TSARS  AND   THE  RUSSIANS.' 

Europe,  previous  to  the  coming  of  the  first  Aryan  immigrants.  It 
is  not  in  subterranean  caves  alone,  amidst  the  remains  of  the 
mammals  belonging  to  the  geological  period  immediately  preced- 
ing our  own,  that  these  extinct  races  have  left  vestiges  of  their 
passage ;  they  can  be  traced  even  in  the  features  of  those  European 
populations  who  have  taken  their  place.  Covered  over  by  later 
invasions,  and  buried  under  successive  strata  of  Aryan  alluvions, 
these  old  inhabitants  of  Europe  are  no  longer  visible  to  the 
vulgar ;  the  anthropologist  alone  at  times  fancies  he  can  detect 
survivals  of  those  primeval  Europeans  on  contemporary  faces,  in 
the  midst  of  the  most  civilized  coimtries.* 

Instead  of  being  exclusively  Asiatic,  the  Turanian  element 
and  some  other,  analogous  ones,  may  possibly  have  played  in 
Western  Europe  a  part  at  once  ethnological  and  historical ;  they 
may  have  furnished  the  bottom  layer,  the  substratum,  vanished 
long  ago,  of  the  peoples  of  Central  Europe.  A  few  scientists  have 
gone  so  far  as  to  consider  the  Finns  of  the  northwest  of  Russia  as 
a  survival  of  those  quaternary  tribes  who,  driven  from  the  centre 
of  Europe  by  Indo-European  invaders,  would  naturally  have  sought 
shelter  on  the  shore  of  the  Baltic,  in  the  lowlands  but  recently 
emerged  out  of  its  waters.  It  is  more  probable  that  the  Russian 
Finns,  instead  of  having  sprung  directly  from  those  prehistoric  peo- 
ples, to  whom  they  appear,  on  the  whole,  to  be  vastly  superior,  are 
but  very  remotely  related  to  them,  and  have  themselves  descended 
from  the  Ural  at  a  comparatively  late  period.  Whatever  the  date 
of  their  migration,  they  may  be  considered  as  established  in 
Europe  at  least  as  fer  back  as  the  oldest  Aryan  populations. 
Settled  in  Europe  at  a  time  as  remote  as  any  one  of  our  European 
families,  with  as  much  claim  as  any  to  the  name  of  "  autochthons" 
or  "aborigines,"  the  Finns,  later  on,  took  a  considerable  part  in 

*  On  this  subject  we  can  refer  the  reader  to  La  Race  Prussienng,  by 
M.  de  Quatrefages,  although  this  scientist  appears  to  have  greatly  exagger- 
ated the  inferiority  of  the  Finn  race,  and  to  have,  in  dealing  with  Prussia, 
magnified  beyond  measure  the  part  belonging  to  the  Finn  element,  at  the 
expense  of  the  Slav  and  Teutonic  elements. 


RACES  AND  NATIONALITY.  6'/ 

the  invasions  that  brought  on  the  end  of  the  Roman  Empire. 
The  most  terrible  of  the  Barbarians,  the  Huns,  appear  to  have 
been  of  Finn  extraction,  as  likewise  the  Avars,  the  Bulgars,  and 
the  Hungars — the  latter  being  the  only  contemporary  nation 
sprung  directly  from  this  stock. 

How  much  should  be  credited  to  the  Finn  family  in  the  forma- 
tion of  the  Russian  people,  and  what  physical  and  moral  aptitudes 
has  it  bequeathed  to  them  ?  Slowly  repulsed  or  swallowed  up  by 
rival  races,  the  Finns,  in  their  submersion,  have  left  here  and 
there,  scattered  over  Russia,  islets  which  bear  witness  to  their 
former  widespread  presence,  such  as  mounds  of  ancient  make  in 
a  plain  whence  the  waters  have  washed  away  the  primeval  soil, 
and  covered  everything  with  their  alluvions.  The  Finn  groups 
dispersed  in  the  empire  differ  singularly  in  degree  of  culture,  in 
religion  as  well  as  in  languages  and  dialects.  They  number  but  a 
few  millions  of  souls,  yet,  as  regards  all  the  elements  of  civilization, 
they  exhibit  more  diversity  than  the  great  I^atin  or  Teutonic 
families.  Their  relationship  has  been  established  by  anthropolo- 
gists and  philologists  ;  it  has  long  escaped  the  ken  of  those  inter- 
ested in  the  question,  who  never  achieved  a  common  national 
consciousness  and  have  remained  towards  one  another  in  a  moral 
isolation  as  complete  as  their  geographical  isolation. 

The  Finn  race,  outside  of  Hungary,  is  almost  entirely  com- 
prised within  European  Russia,  where  it  numbers  five  or  six 
millions,  divided  into  a  dozen  different  tribes,  classed  into  three 
or  four  families.*  There  is  first,  in  the  north,  the  Ugrian  family, 
the  only  one  that  still  has  representatives  in  Asia.  It  comprises 
only  two  small  tribes,  of  a  few  thousand  souls  each,  leading  very 
nearly  the  same  life  as  the  Samoy^ds,  like  them  Christians  in 
name  and  Shamanites  in  fact ;  the  Osti^s,  in  Western  Siberia  ; 

*  All  these  tribes  have,  since  the  Finn  scholar  Castren,  been  the  subject 
of  numerous  studies  :  ethnological,  statistical,  philological,  even  juridical,  on 
the  part  of  both  Russian  and  Finn  students, — Ahlquist,  Mainof,  Rittich, 
Kuznetsdf,  Laptef,  Florinsky,  Pop6f,  Maximof,  Yefim^nko,  etc.,  to  whose 
number  should  be  added  Ujfalvy,  adopted  by  France  for  her  own. 


68      THE  EMPIRE  OF   THE    TSARS  AND   THE  RUSSIANS. 

the  Vogids  in  the  northern  part  of  the  Ural.  But  to  this  family, 
which  includes  the  most  miserable  Finn  tribes,  is  allied  the  only 
Finn  people  that  ever  played  a  part  in  Europe  and  attained  a 
high  degree  of  civilization — the  Magyars  of  Hungary.  In  the 
northeast  comes  the  Biarmian  branch,  numbering  from  three  to  four 
hundred  thousand  souls,  decreasing  with  every  year,  however,  as 
they  are  rapidly  getting  russified,  and  unevenly  distributed  among 
the  tribes  of  the  Permians  in  the  basin  of  the  K^a,  that  of  the 
Votiaks  on  the  Viatka,  of  the  Zyrians  on  the  Dvina  and  Petch6ra, 
all  three  orthodox,  the  two  former  addicted  to  agriculture,  the 
third  to  hunting  and  trade.  I/)wer  down  comes  the  family  of  the 
Volga,  with  the  Finns  of  the  south,  more  or  less  crossed  with 
Tatar  elements.  To  this  group  belong  the  three  most  important 
Finn  tribes  of  Russia  proper :  the  Tcheremiss  who,  about  two 
hundred  and  fifty  thousand  in  number,  dwell  along  the  left  bank 
of  the  Volga,  around  the  government  of  Kaz^ ;  the  Mordvins, 
who,  subdivided  into  several  branches,  number  near  on  a  million 
souls,  in  the  very  heart  of  Russia,  between  the  Volga  and  the 
Ok^,  in  the  governments  of  Nijni-N6vgorod,  Penza,  Simbirsk, 
Tambbf,  Sardtof ;  the  Tchuvash,  rather  numerous,  scattered  along 
the  banks  of  the  Volga,  the  ancient  territory  of  the  Tatars  of 
Kaz^,  whose  language  they  have  adopted.*  I<astly,  in  the 
northwest,  we  have  the  Finn  family  proper,  whose  principal 
representatives  are  the  Finns  of  Finland,  subdivided  into  two  or 
three  tribes — the  Suomi,  as  they  call  themselves,  about  the  only 
ones  that  have  a  national  feeling,  the  love  of  their  mother-land, 
a  history,  a  literature ;  also  the  only  ones  who  are  tolerably  sure 
to  escape  the  slow  absorption  that  is  making  an  end  of  all  their 
kindred  races.  They  make  up  five  sixths  of  the  population  in  the 
Grand  Duchy  of  Finland,  but  a  population  almost  entirely  rural, 
as  the  Swedish  element,  much  mixed  with  German  and  Russian, 

*  All  these  Finn  tribes  have  long  been  mistaken  by  foreigners  for 
Tatars.  The  travellers  of  olden  times  thus  helped  to  strengthen  the  fiction 
about  the  Russians  being  of  Tatar  origin. 


RACES  AND  NATIONALITY.  69 

is  invariably  predominant  in  the  towns.  Over  and  above  the 
1,800,000  odd  they  number  in  Finland,  the  Suomi  come  in  for  about 
250,000  more  in  the  population  of  the  adjacent  Russian  govern- 
ments. 

St.  Petersburgh,  sooth  to  say,  is  built  in  the  midst  of  a  Finn 
land ;  the  immediate  surroundings  only  are  russified,  and  quite 
recently  too.  Scarcely  half  a  century  ago,  Russian  was  not  under- 
stood in  the  villages  at  the  very  gates  of  the  capital,  even  nowadays 
the  latter  is  surrounded  with  fragments  of  Finn  tribes.  In  the 
northwest,  the  Suomi  of  Finland  stretch  down  nearly  to  its  suburbs ; 
in  the  west,  where  the  great  lakes  are,  the  Karels  and  the  Veses, 
who  appear  to  have  for  a  long  time  occupied  a  vast  territory; 
in  the  southwest,  nine  hundred  thousand  Ehsts  (Esthonians), 
who,  having  been,  through  four  or  five  hundred  years, 
subject  to  the  rule  of  German  lords,  have  resisted  germani- 
zation  in  Esthonia  and  Northern  I^ivonia.*  To  the  same  Finn 
branch  belong  the  Livs,  a  tribe  very  nearly  extinct,  which  has  be- 
queathed its  name  to  I^ivonia,  and  which,  being  pressed  upon  by 
both  I^etts  and  Germans,  holds  only  a  narrow  strip  of  land  along 
the  sea,  at  the  northern  point  of  Curland.  To  the  same  branch 
belongs  lastly  the  Lapp  tribe — the  very  ugliest,  morally  the  least 
developed,  of  all  its  kindred,  the  only  one,  perhaps,  that  has  pre- 
served the  original,  primeval  features  and  mode  of  life  of  the  parent 
stock.  It  appears  that  the  Lapps  at  one  time  owned  the  whole  of 
Finland,  before  they  were  cornered  by  the  Suomi  into  the  hyperbo- 
rean regions  to  which  they  are  to  this  day  confined.  On  the  other 
side  of  the  White  Sea,  a  small  tribe  which  also  once  covered  a 
far  more  extensive  area,  the  Samoyeds,  get  shoved  about  a  good 
deal,  being  numbered  now  among  the  Finns,  now  among  the 
Mongols.     At  another  extremity  of  the  vast  area  covered  by  the 

♦According  to  Mr.  Rittich,  the  Germans  in  the  population  of  the  three 
Baltic  provinces  (Esthonia,  Livonia,  and  Curland)  would  count  only  for 
something  less  than  y|[^,  the  Finns  for  ^^,  the  Letto-Lithuanians  for  ^^, 
the  balance  consisting  of  Russians,  Poles,  Swedes,  and  Jews. 


70      THE  EMPIRE  OF  THE   TSARS  AND   THE  RUSSIANS. 

Tchuds,  another  tribe,  much  more  considerable  by  its  numbers, 
is  also  placed  on  the  confine  of  two  ethnic  groups  :  the  Bashkirs, 
one  million  strong,  dwell  on  the  slopes  of  the  Ural ;  they  have 
been  pronounced  alternately  to  be  Finns  and  Tatars  ;  in  reality 
they  are  Mussulmans  and  speak  a  Tatar  language. 

Thus  minutely  is  this  race  subdivided, — a  race  whose  mem- 
bers profess  every  religion,  from  Shamanism  to  Islam,  firom  the 
Greek  Orthodox  faith  to  I,utheranism ; — who  are  nomads,  like 
the  Lapp  and  Osti^ ;  pastoral,  like  the  Bashkir ;  farmers,  like 
the  Ehst  or  Finn ; — a  race  that  has  assumed  the  worship  and  at 
times  the  language  of  one  and  the  other,  everywhere  ruled  by 
people  of  diflferent  extraction,  russified  after  having  been  partly 
tatarized,'  so  that  every  influence  has  contributed  to  break  it  up 

'  Why  not  mention  the  germanization,  systematic  and  aggressive,  to 
which  the  Ehsts  and  I/etts  are  subjected  in  the  Baltic  provinces,  where  they 
make  out  fully  three  quarters  of  the  population  ?  Russification  is  nowhere 
intentional,  much  less  compulsory,  beyond  demanding  a  reasonable  com- 
prehension of  the  language  of  the  empire,  and  the  passing  of  a  very  easy- 
grade  examination  from  persons  filling  or  desiring  to  fill  official  positions. 
The  rest  accomplishes  itself  naturally,  by  inevitable  influences,  community 
of  interests,  of  social  and  political  conditions,  intercourse,  and,  in  a  very 
moderate  proportion,  mixing  of  blood.  The  German  aristocracy  and 
bourgeoisie^  notwithstanding  their  extremely  small  numbers  (^J^ ;  see 
author's  note  on  p.  69),  have  undertaken  to  germanize  the  provinces, 
and  not  only  did  they  admit  no  language  but  German  in  private  schools, 
refusing  to  send  their  children  to  the  "gymnasiums"  (public  schools), 
colleges,  special  schools,  etc.,  provided  by  the  government,  or  to  speak 
to  the  "natives"  their  own  language,  or  even  learn  to  understand  it ;  not 
only  was  the  same  proceeding  applied  to  the  Lutheran  churches,  attend- 
ance in  which  was  made  virtually  compulsory  by  the  wealthy  and  powerful 
noble  German  landlords  ;  but  when  the  government,  for  reasons  of  states- 
manship too  obvious  to  need  defence,  decreed  that  business  in  the  public 
government  oflBces  and  courts  of  justice,  police,  etc.,  should  be  transacted 
in  Russian  and  that  the  Russian  language  should  be  taught  in  schools,  not 
to  the  exclusion  of,  but  side  by  side  with,  German,  also  that  the  railway  con- 
ductors and  other  public  servants  should,  not  necessarily  be  Russians,  but 
understand  and  speak  Russian,  the  discontent  of  the  y^  Germans  was  not  only 
loudly  voiced  but  vented  in  open,  active  opposition,  while  the  foreign  press 
was  played  off  to  such  good  purpose  that  philanthropic  Europe  soon  raised  the 
usual  hue  and  cry  of  "tyranny,"  "oppression,"  "barbarism,"  with  which 
she  greeted  the  simplest  measures  of  national  unity  and  safety  in  Russian 
Poland,  though  she  had  never  seen  an3rthing  amiss  in  Prussia's  well-known 


RACES  AND  NATIONALITY.  /I 

into  insignificant  fragments.  Although  equal  in  numbers  to  their 
Hungarian  brethren,  the  Finns  of  the  Russian  Empire  are  far 
from  laying  claim  to  an  equal  political  weight. 

.  If  we  but  consider  the  distribution  of  the  Finn  tribes  from  the 
Ural  and  the  great  elbow  formed  by  the  Volga  to  the  Neva,  we 
shall  find  that  the  principality  of  Moscow  and  the  surrounding 
appanages  were  comprised  within  the  former  territory  of  the 
Tchuds.  Their  diffusion  will  appear  greater  still  if  we  note  the 
geographical  names ;  for,  in  many  a  region  now  thoroughly  Rus- 
sian, the  names  of  places,  villages,  rivers,  have  remained  Finnic. 
Moscow,  as  Petersburgh  after  and  N6vgorod  before  her,  was  built 
on  land  that  was  Tchud  to  the  core.  The  same  can  be  said  of 
S^dal,  Vladimir,  Tver,  Riazdn — of  all  the  capitals  where  resided 
the  kniazes  (princes)  of  the  Great-Russians.  In  the  face  of  such 
facts,  is  it  not  allowable,  in  all  the  centre  and  north,  to  look  on 
the  old  Finn  blood  as  one  of  the  elements  that  enter  into  the 
constitution  of  the  young  Russian  nation  ? ' 

It  is  not  only  on  history  and  ethnographic  maps  that  this 
induction  is  based  ;  it  is  also  justified  by  the  features  of  the  peo- 
ple. But  for  this  indelible  stamp,  it  might  remain  an  open  ques- 
tion whether  the  colonists  who  brought  the  Slavic  language  into 
Russia,  mingled  with  the  natives,  or,  like  the  Anglo-Saxons  in 
America,  simply  pushed  them  aside  to  take  their  place.  An  atten- 
tive investigation  shows  that  both  phenomena  took  place  and  that, 
too,  simultaneously.  The  actual  distribution  of  their  tribes  leads 
to  the  conclusion  that  the  Finns  really  were  pressed  upon  on  two 
sides  by  the  Slavs — ^pushed  in  the  west  towards  the  Baltic,  in  the 
east  towards  the  Ural  and  the  middle  course  of  the  Volga. 
Anthropology  nevertheless  proves  that  there  has  been  a  mingling 

iron  methods  of  "  germanizing  "  her  own  "  Polish  provinces,"  as  also,  later 
on,  Alsace-Lorraine. 

"^  This  is  not  the  case  quite  to  the  extent  supposed  by  Mr.  Beaulieu, 
owing  to  the  extreme  scarcity  of  marriages,  or  even  love  passages,  between 
members  of  different  races  among  the  lower  classes,  the  only  ones  that, 
making  the  bulk  of  the  population,  count  in  such  matters.  This  note 
should  be  borne  in  mind  through  the  following  pages. 


72      THE  EMPIRE   OF   THE    TSARS  AND   THE  RUSSIANS. 

of  races,  of  which  many  a  Russian  face  still  bears  the  imprint. 
The  way  in  which  the  Slavic  element  at  the  present  day  absorbs 
the  Finn  groups  under  our  very  eyes  helps  us  understand  the 
past.  The  russification  of  the  contemporary  Finns,  their  geo- 
graphical distribution,  the  imprint  left  by  them  on  the  Russian  feat- 
ures,— these  are  the  three  proofs  in  favor  of  this  secular  crossing ; 
the  two  former  appeal  to  the  mind,  the  latter  is  patent  to  the  eye. 

The  Finn  tribes  of  Russia  differ  considerably  among  them- 
selves in  physical  characteristics  as  well  as  in  their  respective 
degrees  of  culture.  A  few,  such  as  the  Lapps  and  the  Tchu- 
■yash,  show  a  strongly  marked  Mongolian  type.  Others — the 
more  important  ones,  such  as  the  Suomi  of  Finland  and  the  Ehsts, 
owing  to  the  influence  of  their  surroundings  or  of  alliances  the 
trace  of  which  is  lost,  show  nobler  features,  more  nearly  akin  to 
the  Caucasian  type  than  to  the  Mongolian.  Still,  all  these  groups 
retain  certain  characteristics  which  have  not  entirely  disappeared 
even  among  the  Magyars,  the  people  which,  having  mingled  most 
with  Europe,  has  undergone  the  greatest  modification.  The 
structure  of  the  skeleton  is  less  robust  than  that  of  the  Aryans  and 
Semites,  the  legs  are  shorter  and  leaner.  The  head  is  mostly  round, 
short,  little  developed  in  the  back,  in  a  word — ^brachycephalous, 
like  the  heads  of  one  of  the  chief  geological  races  of  Europe,  now 
extinct.  The  face  is  generally  flat,  with  high  cheek-bones  ;  the 
eyes  are  small ;  the  nose  wide  ;  the  mouth  large,  thick-lipped. 
These  peculiarities  are  frequently  encountered  among  Russians  of 
all  classes,  but  most  among  the  peasants  and  especially  among 
women,  who  everywhere  retain  more  tenaciously  the  ethnical 
stamp. 

When  confronted  by  such  marks  of  kindred  between  this  semi- 
prehistoric  race  and  the  most  mighty  in  numbers  of  European 
nations,  the  observer  inquires  what  genius,  capacities,  aptitude  for 
civilization,  we  can  credit  the  Finns  with.  Is  it  true  that  kinship 
with  them  must  be  to  the  Russians  an  irremediable  cause  of  infe- 
riority ?  That  may  be  doubted.  Hampered  by  their  isolation  and 
tbeir  disruption  into  infinitesimal  fractions,  also  by  the  thankless 


RACES  AND  NATIONALITY.  73 

quality  of  the  lands  to  which  they  are  confined,  the  Finns  never 
had  a  chance  of  achieving  original  development.  As  though  in 
compensation  for  this  disadvantage,  they  have  everywhere  shown 
a  singular  facility  to  assimilate  with  the  more  advanced  races 
whenever  they  have  come  in  contact  with  them.  It  is  with  them 
as  with  the  country  which  contains  most  of  their  remains,  as  with 
the  Russian  soil :  they  readily  yield  to  a  civilization  which  could 
not  have  originated  with  them  ;  if  they  do  not,  by  blood,  belong 
to  Europe,  they  are  quite  willing  to  be  annexed  by  her.  The 
greater  part  have  long  been  Christians,  at  least  in  name,  and  it  is 
Christianity  which,  more  than  anything  else,  has  prepared  their 
fusion  with  the  Slavs,  their  incorporation  into  European  civiliza- 
tion. From  Hungary  to  the  Baltic  and  to  the  Volga,  the  Finns 
have  embraced  with  equal  facility  the  three  principal  historical 
forms  of  Christianity  ;  the  latest.  Protestantism,  thrives  better  in 
their  tribes  in  Finland  and  Esthonia  than  among  the  Celtic, 
Iberian,  and  Latin  peoples. 

If  we  would  look  to  language  for  the  clearest  test  of  a  race's 
intelligence,  we  must  admit  that  certain  Finns — the  Suomi  of  Fin- 
land and  the  Magyars  of  Hungary — have  carried  their  aggluti- 
native languages  to  such  perfection  as  enables  them,  for  power, 
richness,  and  harmony,  to  bear  comparison  with  the  most  complete 
of  our  flexional  languages.  They  have  an  innate  taste  for  music 
and  poetry,  a  taste  the  embryonic  beginnings  of  which  are  per- 
ceptible among  the  most  barbarous  of  their  nomadic  tribes,  and 
which  has  endowed  Finland  with  a  treasury  of  popular  literature, 
an  entire  cycle  of  indigenous  poetry, — an  epos  which  the  most 
advanced  nations  of  the  West  would  feel  honored  to  own.*     To 

*  The  Kalevala,  a  collection  of  popular  rhapsodies,  connected  and  put 
into  shape  by  the  Finn  scholar  I/6nnrot,  and  translated  into  French  by 
Mr.  L^ouzon  I,educ,  with  the  assistance  of  Lonnrot  himself  (editions  of 
1845,  1867,  1879).^ 

*  While  mentioning  the  French  translator  of  the  Kalevala,  the  name 
of  Anton  Schiefner  should  not  be  ignored,  a  prominent  member  of  the 
Russian  Imperial  Academy  of  Sciences  at  St.  Petersburg,  a  scholar  of 
colossal  Turanian  erudition,  who  edited  most  of  Castren's  works  and  left  a 
most  scholarly  German  translation  of  the  Finns'  national  epic. 


74       THE  EMPIRE   OF   THE    TSARS  AND   THE  RUSSIANS. 

these  qualities  of  heart  and  mind  they  add  others  that  do  credit 
to  their  intellect  and  character.  If  so  be  that  the  Finns  are  akin 
to  the  Mongols  and  other  peoples  of  the  extreme  East,  they  can 
lay  claim  to  the  virtues  of  those  Asiatic  races,  which,  wherever 
they  are  engaged  in  strife  with  ours,  stand  the  competition  so 
well ;  they  have  the  same  fortitude,  patience,  perseverance.  That 
may  be  the  reason  why,  in  all  countries  where  their  influence 
can  be  traced,  they  seem  to  have  left  behind  them  a  leaven  com- 
pounded of  singular  power  of  resistance  and  singular  vitality. 

These  qualities  have  most  brilliantly  manifested  themselves 
in  the  Magyars,  who,  in  spite  of  their  scant  numbers,  have  held 
their  own  against  Germans,  Slavs,  and  Turks  ;  the  same  qualities 
are  thought  to  belong  to  the  Bulgars,  the  most  industrious,  the 
most  patient,  among  the  Christian  peoples  of  ancient  Turkey. 
And  if  (as  M.  de  Quatrefages  asserts  and  Virchow  denies) — if  the 
Finn  element  has  really  played  an  important  part  in  Old  Prussia, 
Modem  Prussia  possibly  is  indebted  to  them  for  some  of  the 
vigor  and  tenacity  of  purpose  which  have  made  her  fortune.*  In 
Russia  itself  the  Finns,  far  from  being  inferior  to  the  Russians, 
at  times  show  a  real  superiority  over  them.  If  nothing  can  be 
meaner  than  a  Tchuvash  hut  on  the  Volga,  with  its  roof  of  bark 
and  its  single  window,  the  wooden  houses  of  the  peasants  in  Fin- 
land are  more  roomy,  more  commodious,  than  the  izbas  of  many 
Russian  mujiks.*  Settled  on  a  more  thankless  land,  on  a  granitic 
soil  which  seldom  insures  their  daily  food,  they  work  harder  and 
are  more  saving.  They  have  earned  a  reputation  for  honesty  and 
uprightness.     Only,  it  is  rather  difl&cult  to  make  out  whether  this 

■*  As  regards  the  Bulgars,  there  is  hardly  room  for  doubt,  although  a 
Russian  scholar,  carried  away  by  a  retrospective  Slavophil  patriotism, — Mr. 
Ilovayski — undertook  to  demonstrate  that  the  Bulgars  are  Slavs,  pure  of  all 
Uralo-Finn  admixture. 

*  Constructed,  however,  on  precisely  the  same  plan,  with  identical  inte- 
rior disposition  and  furnishings  :  the  immense  brick  stove,  faced  with  tiles 
in  the  better  class  of  houses,  containing  the  deep,  wide-mouthed,  vaulted 
oven  ;  the  massive  wooden  benches  running  round  the  sides  of  the  room, 
and  the  ponderous  family  table  built  into  the  floor. 


RACES  AND  NATIONALITY.  75 

moral  superiority  of  the  Western  Finns  should  be  attributed  to 
the  difference  of  race,  or  to  the  difference  of  religion,  or  merely  to 
a  more  ancient  and  wider  use  of  liberty.  The  fact  remains,  any- 
how, that  an  European  traveller,  finding  himself  in  the  midst  of 
Finn  peasants,  with  smooth-shaved  chins  and  short  coats,  gene- 
rally feels  more  at  home  with  them  than  with  Russian  peasants, 
nearer  to  him  in  blood  though  the  latter  may  be. 

The  Finns  of  Finland  have  been  favored  of  history.  The 
long  and  mild  rule  of  Sweden  initiated  them  to  the  civilization  of 
the  West  and  civil  liberty.*  From  a  political  point  of  view  the 
Finlander,  to  whom,  under  Alexander  II.  of  Russia,  was  restored 
his  archaic  constitution  and  his  Diet  composed  of  four  orders,!  is 
the  most  advanced  of  the  peoples  subject  to  the  empire.  Their 
neighbors  and  brethren,  in  religion  as  well  as  race,  the  Bhsts,  hav- 
ing, until  the  beginning  of  this  century,  held  the  position  of  serfs 
to  German  lords,  were  less  fortunate.  Nevertheless  they  too  have, 
at  Revel  and  Dorpat,  their  own  press  and  a  national  literature  ; 
they  too  show  themselves,  in  certain  respects,  superior  to  the 
Russian  peasants.  They  are  more  patient  and  hardworking,  and 
have  been  invited  to  settle  on  the  estates  of  several  Russian  land- 
lords, very  profitably  for  the  latter.  Such  Ehst  colonies  can  be 
met  with  in  the  governments  of  St.  Petersburgh  and  Pskof  and 
even  as  far  as  Crimea.  And  lastly,  should  we  wish  to  realize 
what  contact  with  Aryans,  and  more  especially  Slavs,  can  make 
of  peoples  of  Finnic  extraction,  as  regards  beauty  of  body  and 

*  The  Grand  Duchy  of  Finland  is  less  a  Russian  province  than  an 
annexed  state,  and  the  tsars  have  wisely  respected  its  autonomy.  Finland 
has  preserved  her  own  laws  and  institutions.  In  certain  respects  the  trans- 
fer under  Russian  rule  has  been  all  gain  to  the  Finns  of  Finland.  The 
Russian  monarchs  ennobled  the  Finnish  language,  which  before  was  spoken 
only  by  country  people,  by  raising  it  to  the  rank  of  official  language  on  a 
par  with  the  Swedish  language,  which  still  is  that  of  a  portion  of  the 
littoral,  the  principal  cities,  and  the  higher  classes  of  society.  See  further 
on,  p.  134. 

t  Nobility,  clergy,  town-burghers,  peasants,  after  the  old  Swedish 
constitution. 


76      THE  EMPIRE  OF  THE    TSARS  AND   THE  RUSSIANS. 

vigor  of  mind,'  we  have  only  to  look  at  the  Magyars,  one  of  the 

handsomest,  as  well  as  most  energetic  races  of  Europe.      If  there 

is  any  inferiority,  it  is  certainly  not  from  a  political,  nor  from  a 

military  standpoint,  for  the  Magyars  have,  at  all  times,  been  one 

of  the  most  warlike  nations  of  Europe,  and  through  all  their 

revolutions,  have  been  truer  to  free  institutions  than  most  Aryan 

nations,  be  they  Slav,  Latin,  or  German. 

*  Here  at  last  Mr.  Beaulien  gives  us  the  real  gist  of  the  matter,  which 
he  had  somehow  missed  through  the  preceding  pages  :  the  influence  is  not 
from  Finn  to  Slav,  but  the  other  way.  Such  is  ever  the  relation  between 
Turanian  and  Indo-European.  To  be  entirely  just,  however,  the  very  real 
superiority  of  the  Finns  of  Finland,  while  certainly  not  an  intrinsic  racial 
one,  as  is  more  than  hinted  above,  p.  75,  is  not  so  much  due  to  Slavic  influ- 
ences as  to  Swedish  ones.  As  to  the  Magyars,  they  owe  their  aryanization 
to  vicinity  and  actual  cohabitation  with  Slavs  in  the  same  wide  lands. 
The  KaUvala  is  full  of  descriptions  of  simple  rural  life,  and  it  is  astonish- 
ing how  many,  even  to  minute  details,  might  just  as  well  apply  to  Russian 
or  Swedish  peasant  life.  The  same  may  be  said  of  many  of  the  customs 
therein  pictured.  This  goes  far  to  corroborate  the  latest  theories  on  the 
original  unity  or  extremely  close  affinity  of  the  "  primeval  Teutonic " 
(Ur-deutsch)  and  "primeval  Slavic"  [Ur-slamsch)  stocks,  since  it  is 
undoubtedly  from  these  two  elements  that  the  Turanian  Finn,  from  the 
first,  absorbed  those  of  his  own  social  and  national  organization. 


BOOK  II.      CHAPTER  III. 

The  Tatar  or  Turk  Element— Tatars  and  Mongols— The  Kalmyks— What 
is  the  Proportion  of  Tatar  Blood  in  the  Russians? — The  Tatars  in 
Russia  and  the  Arabs  in  Spain — Slow  Elimination  of  the  Tatar  Ele- 
ment— Ethnical  Influence  of  the  Turk  Tribes  Previous  to  the  Mongol 
Invasion — Varieties  of  Type  amidst  the  Modem  Tatars — Their  Customs 
and  Character. 

Thk  second  of  the  great  fountain-heads  from  which  the 
Russian  people  might  be  said  to  have  flowed — the  one  most  pecul- 
iar to  Russia,  more  decidedly  Asiatic,  has  received  from  habit  the 
name  of  '*  Tatar."  Never  did  more  misleading  designation  steal 
into  history,  philology,  ethnography.  At  its  first  appearance  in 
Russia  this  name  was  borne  by  one  of  the  Mongol  tribes  who 
helped  found  the  empire  of  Djinghiz-Khan.  In  her  terror  of 
these  new  barbarians,  who  seemed  to  her  the  outcome  of  hell, 
Europe  (it  was  in  the  thirteenth  century)  dubbed  them  "Tartars,** 
and  this  name,  suggested  by  a  classical  reminiscence,  was  ex- 
tended to  all  the  heterogeneous  crowd  of  peoples  dragged  along 
after  the  savage  conquerors.  As  to  the  old  name,  "Mongols," 
the  tribes  to  which  it  belonged  by  right  were  robbed  of  it,  and 
it  came  to  designate  that  branch  of  the  Uralo- Altaic  stock,  of 
which  Turkestan  was  the  starting-point,  and  of  which  the  Turks 
are  the  chief  representatives.  The  Tatars  who  stayed  on  the 
banks  of  the  Volga  are  nearly  related  to  the  Turks,  or  rather  they 
are  Turks,  just  as  the  Ottomans,  both  risen  from  the  same  cradle, 
both  speaking  dialects  of  the  same  language  ;  all  the  difference 
between  them  being  that  the  Ottomans  invaded  Europe  later  and 
were  converted  to  Islam  only  after  that  invasion.    To  this  day  the 

77 


78      THE  EMPIRE  OF   THE    TSARS  AND  THE  RUSSIANS. 

scions  of  the  tribes  from  Turkestan  who,  coerced  and  led  by  the 
Mongols,  settled  in  Russia,  have  not  lost  the  memory  of  their 
origin  :  the  Tatars  of  Kaz&n  and  Astrakhan  call  themselves  Turks, 
a  name  endeared  to  them  by  the  ancient  glory  of  the  Osmanlis  and 
a  common  religion. 

The  Turkish  branch  is,  at  present,  nearer  to  the  Finnic  than  to 
the  Mongolian  branches.*  Turks  and  Finns  have  often  met  and 
mixed  to  such  extent,  that  there  are  tribes — the  Bashkirs  and  Tchu- 
vashes  for  instance — in  whom  it  is  diflScult  to  make  out  the  share  of 
one  and  the  other.  The  difl&culty  is  still  greater  when  dealing  with 
extinct  peoples,  such  as  the  Huns,  the  Avars,  and  the  old  Bulgars 
of  the  Volga,  in  whom  the  Finn  blood  seems  to  have  predomi- 
nated,— the  Alans  and  Roxolans.f  who  appear  to  have  been 
mostly  Turks  or  Tatars.  The  union  of  Turk  and  Mongol,  espe- 
cially in  Asia,  has  taken  place  quite  as  frequently,  and  it  is  hard 
at  times  to  distinguish  between  them.  One  instance  of  such 
fusion  still  survives  in  Europe  :  it  is  the  tribe  of  the  Tatar- Nogay, 
who  dwelt  in  the  steppes  of  the  Kuban  and  of  the  Crimean  penin- 
sula before  they  were  driven  out  into  those  of  the  Kuma.  The 
features  of  these  nomads  seem  to  bear  out  the  notion  of  an  alli- 
ance  with  the  Mongols.  They  have  the  same  square,  squat  figure, 
the  eyes  raised  obliquely  towards  the  external  angle,  the  broad, 
flat  nose,  the  beardless  chin.  This  case  stands  alone  amidst  the 
Russian  Turks.  As  a  rule,  whenever  their  countenance  betrays  a 
cross,  it  is  rather  with  the  Finns  or  the  peoples  of  the  Caucasus.' 

*  In  their  primitive  and  unalloyed  stage,  the  Turks  may  have  been  nearer 
to  the  Mongols.     (See  Revue  cf  Anthropologie,  vol.  iii.,  1874,  Nos.  i  and  3.) 

t  Some  Russian  scholars  make  out  these  Roxolans  to  be  Russian  Slavs. 

'  There  certainly  is  nothing  in  the  features  of  the  Tatars  of  the  Volga, 
familiar  to  all  dwellers  in  large  cities,  where  they  ply  their  traditional  trades 
of  peddlers,  restaurant-waiters,  and  cab-drivers,  to  recall  the  no  less  familiar 
type  of  the  Ottoman  Turk.  The  broad  face,  with  slightly  salient  cheek-bones, 
not  too  oblique  eyes,  and  thickish  lips,  yellowish  skin,  and  scant  beard,  is  an 
attenuated  copy  of  the  rampant  Mongolian  type.  The  same  characteristics 
•re  observable  in  the  Finns  of  Finland,  further  modified  by  the  considerable 
strain  of  Scandina\-ian  blood,  to  which  they  owe  their  lustreless  dun  or 
Mndy  locks  and  almost  imperceptible  eyebrows  over  dull,  fishlike  eyes  of 


RACES  AND  NATIONALITY.  79 

There  still  exists  in  European  Russia  a  people  of  Mongol 
origin — the  Kalm^^ks — who  dwell  in  the  Caspian  depression,  this 
side  of  the  Volga.  There  are  about  130,000  of  them,  and  they 
carry  around  their  kibitkas,  or  felt  tents,  and  drive  their  camels 
and  their  flocks  along  in  the  arid  steppes  of  the  governments  of 
Astrakhan  and  Stavrbpol.  It  is  these  twenty-five  or  thirty  thou- 
sand families,  roaming  about  at  one  extremity  of  the  empire, 
whose  name  has  been  so  frequently  applied,  as  a  kind  of  nick- 
name, to  the  Russian  people.  At  first  sight  their  Chinese  type 
distinguishes  them  nearly  as  markedly  from  the  Tatars  as  from 
the  Russians.  It  is  to  be  noted  that  these  Mongols  of  the  Volga 
did  not  enter  Europe  in  the  rear  of  Batii  and  the  successors  of 
Jinghiz-khan,  but  settled  down  in  that  forgotten  comer  of  Russia 
at  a  relatively  recent  period.  It  was  as  late  as  the  seventeenth 
century  that,  after  a  long  migration  from  the  confines  of  China  to 
the  Ural  River,  these  spiritual  subjects  of  the  Dalai  Lama  of  Thibet 
set  foot  in  the  steppes  by  the  Volga.  Taking  advantage  of  the 
hereditary  rivalry  between  the  Mongol  and  Tatar  tribes,  Russia 
successfully  employed  these  new-comers  in  her  wars  against  the 
Turks  and  the  Khans  of  Crimea ;  but  any  attempts  to  get  them 
into  more  direct  subjection  caused  numbers  of  them  to  return  to 
their  original  fatherland.  They  went  en  masse,  giving  the 
eighteenth  century  the  spectacle  of  a  wholesale  migration,  like 
those  of  olden  times.  During  the  winter  of  1770  from  two  to 
three  hundred  thousand  Kalmyks,  with  their  flocks,  crossed  the 
Volga  and  Ural  upon  the  ice.  Then  thaw  came  on  and  detained 
the  rest,  who  decided  to  stay  in  Russia,  while  their  brethren,  not- 
withstanding repeated  attacks  from  the  Kirghiz,  plodded  on  to 
their  old  homesteads  on  the  confines  of  the  Chinese  Empire. 

washed-out  blue.  If  the  long  contact  with  their  whilom  masters  has  un- 
doubtedly ennobled  them  morally  and  intellectually,  it  has  not  done  the 
same  service  to  their  personal  appearance,  for  they  are  the  most  appallingly 
homely  people  one  can  meet.  It  is  related  of  the  Emperor  Nicholas  that, 
stopping  at  a  Finn  village  a  hundred  miles  or  so  from  the  capital,  he  was 
so  disagreeably  struck  by  the  physique  of  the  villagers,  that  he  ordered 
one  of  his  handsomest  guard-regiments  to  be  forthwith  stationed  there. 


80      THE  EMPIRE  OF  THE   TSARS  AND   THE  RUSSIANS. 

The  Kalmyks  who  stayed  in  the  cis-Caspian  steppes,  owning 
the  Russian  sovereignty,  were,  until  very  lately,  all  Buddhists. 
They  had  a  chief  to  whom  they  gave  the  title  of  Grand-Lama, 
who,  since  Alexander  I.,  was  nominated  by  the  Tsar,  and  whose 
residence  lay  somewhere  near  Astrakhan.  There  is  one  fact 
which  has  exercised  vital  influence  on  their  respective  destinies, 
it  is  that  the  three  chief  branches  of  the  Uralo- Altaic  race  have 
apportioned  to  themselves  the  three  chief  religions  of  the  old 
continent.  The  Finn  has  become  Christian  ;  the  Turk  or  Tatar, 
Moslem  ;  the  Mongol,  Buddhist.  To  this  ethnological  distribu- 
tion of  worships  there  are  few  exceptions.  It  is  in  this  diversity 
of  faiths,  above  all,  that  we  must  seek  for  the  causes  of  the  widely 
diverging  destinies  of  the  three  groups,  especially  the  Finn  and  the 
Tatar.  Religion  has  prepared  the  one  to  European  ways  of  life  ; 
religion  has  removed  the  other  from  the  same  influences.  Islam 
gave  the  Tatar  a  more  precocious  national  civilization,  and  helped 
him  to  build  such  thriving  cities  as  ancient  Saray  and  Kazan, 
and  to  found,  in  Europe  and  in  Asia,  powerful  states.  Islam  gave 
him  a  more  brilliant  past,  but,  on  the  other  hand,  prepares  for  him 
more  difficulties  in  the  future. 

It  is  to  the  Tatars  that  the  Russians  have  long  been  indebted 
for  the  misnomer  of  "  Mongols  " ;  yet  the  Tatars  themselves  have 
but  a  questionable  claim  to  the  name.  In  any  case,  it  ought 
to  be  dropped  when  dealing  with  the  Russians,  not  because  in 
itself  offensive,  but  because  resulting  from  a  misapprehension. 

The  Russians  have  scarcely  a  few  drops  of  Mongol  blood ;  have 
they  much  more  Tatar  blood  ?  Perhaps  even  less  than  the  Span- 
ish people  have  Moorish  or  Arab  blood.  In  Spain  the  Arabs 
stayed  much  longer,  occupied  a  far  larger  portion  of  the  territory, 
settled  down  in  far  greater  numbers,  and  held  the  peninsula  under 
their  own  immediate  rule.  In  Russia,  the  Tatars  having  entered 
the  country  in  the  thirteenth  century,  were,  already  in  the  six- 
teenth, driven  back  to  the  extremities.  They  ruled  hardly  more 
than  one  half  of  European  Russia,  and  the  greater  part  of  even 


RACES  AND  NATIONALITY.  8 1 

that  they  did  not  hold  under  their  direct  sway,  but  merely 
under  their  suzerainty.  They  did  not  destroy  the  Russian  princi- 
palities, but  were  content  to  make  them  pay  tribute.  The  Arabs 
colonized  the  fairest  regions  of  Spain,  those  which,  to  this  day, 
are  the  most  fertile  and  most  populous.  The  Tatars  spread  over 
the  parts  of  Russia  which  are  even  now  the  most  thinly  peopled, 
— over  the  steppes  of  the  south  and  east.  Towards  the  centre 
they  advanced  only  up  the  rivers,  along  the  Volga  and  its  tributa- 
ries, as  shown  even  still  by  their  actual  distribution.  It  was  not 
even  into  the  midst  of  the  Russians  that  these  colonizers  from 
Asia  broke  their  way.  The  Russians  at  that  time  had  barely 
reached  the  central  basin  of  the  Volga  and  the  junction  of  this 
river  with  the  Ok^  at  Nijni  Nbvgorod.  So  it  was  the  Finnish 
peoples,  discussed  in  the  preceding  chapter,  in  whose  midst  they 
appeared  ;  the  peoples  whose  remains  we  see  in  the  Mordvins,  the 
Tcheremiss,  the  Tchuvash,  and  of  whom  several  suffered  them- 
selves to  be  tatarized.  The  Russian  Turks  have  not,  like  the 
Arabs  in  Spain,  created  a  rich  and  industrious  civilization ;  far 
from  devoting  themselves  to  a  sedentary  agricultural  life,  they 
in  part  remained  nomads.  Their  cities  were  not  numerous,  and 
the  largest  were  small  in  comparison  with  the  Moorish  capitals  in 
Andalusia.  With  a  territory  three  or  four  times  as  extensive,  it 
is  doubtful  whether  the  Golden-Horde  ever  came  up  in  numbers  to 
the  Khalifat  of  Cordova.  An  analysis  of  the  two  languages 
suggests  similar  conclusions.  The  mark  left  by  Arabic  on  the 
Spanish  language  is  incomparably  deeper  than  that  imprinted 
by  the  Turkish  or  Tatar  language  on  Russian. 

Have  the  Moslem  Tatars  contributed  more  towards  the  forma- 
tion of  the  Russian  people  because,  instead  of  expelling  the  Ma- 
hometans, as  did  Catholic  Castile,  Orthodox  Moscovia  left  them 
th«ir  reUgion  and  their  newly  adopted  country  ?  The  contrary 
appears  more  probable.  In  Russia  as  in  Spain  the  reasons  for 
separation  between  victors  and  vanquished  remained  the  same 
during  the  rule  of  the  Cross  as  during  its  subjection,  and  they  all 

6 


82      THE  EMPIRE  OF  THE    TSARS  AND  THE  RUSSIANS. 

centred  in  one  thing— religion,  which  raised  between  the  two 
races  an  insuperable  barrier.  From  the  one  to  the  other,  before 
as  well  as  after  the  national  deliverance,  there  was  but  one  road 
—  apostasy.  If  preaching  and  self-interest  made  many  converts 
amidst  the  Mussulmans  in  Russia,  especially  amidst  the  Murzas 
or  Tatar  chieftains,  a  great  many  more  must  have  taken  place 
amidst  the  Mussulmans  in  Spain,  subjected  as  they  had  been 
through  many  long  years  to  the  most  unscrupulous  proselytism, 
till  the  day  came  when  they  could  keep  their  faith  only  at  the 
cost  of  wealth  and  country.  In  Russia  no  such  alternative  was 
ever  placed  before  the  Mussulmans.  The  Tsars  never  had  need  to 
resort  to  such  barbarities  in  order  to  decrease  in  their  states  the 
power  of  the  Tatar  element.  What  was  done  violently  in  Spain, 
to  her  eternal  damage,  did  itself,  slowly,  gradually,  in  Russia. 
All  that  she  had  to  do  was  to  leave  things  to  take  pretty  well  theii 
own  natural  course. 

Simultaneously  with  the  process  of  absorption,  assimilation  of 
the  Finnic  elements,  another,  inverse  process  has  been  going  on 
in  Russia, — that  of  secretion,  elimination  of  the  Tatar  and  Moslem 
elements  which  she  could  not  assimilate.  After  their  submis- 
sion numbers  of  Tatars  left  Russia,  not  wishing  to  remain  as 
subjects  of  the  infidels,  whose  masters  they  had  been.  Before  the 
advance  of  the  Christian  arms,  they  spontaneously  recoiled  back 
to  the  lands  where  the  law  of  the  Prophet  still  held  sway.  After 
the  destruction  of  the  khanates  of  Kazan  and  Astrakhan,  they 
inclined  to  concentrate  in  Crimea  and  the  neighboring  steppes 
which,  as  late  as  the  eighteenth  century,  went  by  the  name  of 
Little  Tartary.  After  the  conquest  of  Crimea  by  Catherine  II. 
they  resimied  their  exodus  towards  the  empire  of  their  Turkish 
brethren,  and  even  in  o'lr  days,  after  the  war  of  Sebast6pol  and 
the  submission  of  the  Caucasus,  the  emigration  of  Tatars  and 
Nogay  has  begun  again  on  an  immense  scale,  at  the  same  time 
as  that  of  the  Tcherkess  (Circassians),  so  that  they  do  not  at  the 
present  day  amount  to  one  fifth  of  their  numbers  at  the  time  of 


RACES  AND  NATIONALITY,  83 

the  annexation  to  Russia.  From  i860  to  1863,  ^igt^  011  200,000 
Tatars  have  gone  fprth  from  the  government  of  Tauris  (Crimea), 
leaving  behind  784  aouls  or  villages,  of  which  three  quarters 
remained  desert  like  the  despoblados  left  by  the  expulsion  of  the 
Moors  on  the  map  of  Spain.  Since  the  introduction  of  obligatory- 
military  service,  in  1874,  this  sort  of  exodus  has  begun  again. 
Thus  it  is  that  defeat  and  self-banishment,  apart  from  absorption 
and  commingling,  have  reduced  the  Tatars  to  small  groups — harm- 
less islets  in  the  countries  v?here  they  have  been  rulers  for  cen- 
turies, in  such  even,  like  Crimea,  of  which,  some  hundred  years 
ago,  they  were  the  sole  inhabitants. 

Recent  examples  show  us  the  natural  and  spontaneous  decrease 
of  the  Tatar  and  Mahometan  elements  in  Russia  ;  that  of  Euro- 
pean Turkey,  where,  up  to  the  emancipation  of  the  Danubian 
principalities,  the  Mussulmans  made  up  only  one  third  or  one 
fourth  of  the  population,  from  which  we  see  that  even  at  the  time 
of  their  sovereignty  the  Tatars  were  numerically  a  minority  in 
their  own  empire.  The  route  followed  by  these  invaders  and  the 
actual  position  of  the  Tatars  along  the  rivers,  in  lands  occupied 
by  Finns,  lead  us  to  think  that  they  formed  a  majority  only 
just  around  their  capitals,  on  the  Volga  and  in  such  other  coun- 
tries hke  Crimea  and  the  steppes  of  the  southeast  as  seem  mean. 
by  nature  for  pastoral  life.  The  figures  to  which  the  armies  of  the 
khans  mounted  up  must  not  mislead  us  as  to  the  nimiber  of  their 
subjects.  In  these  armies,  every  healthy  man  hastened  to 
enlist ;  lacking  fanaticism  or  patriotism,  the  bait  of  booty  was 
suflScient  to  keep  men  from  deserting  in  the  course  of  these  expe- 
ditions, of  which  the  main  object  was  plunder.  A  Crimean  khan 
could  call  together  100,000  warriors  without  having  a  million  of 
subjects.  The  Tatars  scarcely  ever  got  to  the  centre  of  Russia 
except  with  armed  hand,  and  never  settled  there.  Thus  Mos- 
covia  was  and  remained  towards  them,  from  the  point  of  view  of 
population,  in  a  condition  similar  to  that  in  which  Serbia,  Hun- 
gary, Rumania,  and  Greece  stood  towards  the  Turks,  who  in  all 


84      THE  EMPIRE  OF  THE    TSARS  AND   THE  RUSSIANS. 

these  countries  had  but  few  colonies.  Rarely  have  there  been 
two  situations  so  identical  as  that  of  the  Russians  under  the 
Tatar  yoke  and  that  of  the  South  Slavs  under  the  Turkish  yoke. 
In  both  cases  the  same  races  face  each  other,  in  both  the  same 
religions,  so  that  we  have  before  us  the  same  actors  in  the  same 
parts  though  under  diflferent  names,  with  nothing  changed  but 
the  stage.  With  all  these  analogies  the  Russian  has  had  a  great 
advantage  over  the  Bulgar  or  the  Serb,  He  was  vassal  and 
tributary,  but  never  direct  subject.  Therefore  it  may  well  be 
doubted  whether  there  was  any  mixture  of  the  two  races  on  the 
banks  of  the  Volga  any  more  than  on  those  of  the  Danube.  If 
there  was  some,  through  intermarriage,  through  slavery,  rapes, 
and  polygamy,  a  few  perhaps  through  conversions,  sincere  or 
forced,  it  was  perhaps  rather  at  the  cost  of  the  Slavs,  for  through 
all  these  channels  Christian  blood  was  introduced  into  the  Mos- 
lem's veins  far  more  easily  than  Moslem  blood  into  the  veins  of 
the  Christian. 

It  has  frequently  been  remarked  how  rare,  how  abnormal  con- 
versions of  Mahometans  to  Christianity  have  at  all  times  been ; 
the  opposite  phenomenon  has  attracted  less  attention  :  how  much 
more  frequent  has  been  the  passage  from  the  doctrine  of  Christ  to 
taat  of  Mahomet.  All  Western  Asia,  all  Northern  Africa,  Egypt, 
and  Barbary  but  too  loudly  bear  witness  to  the  fact.  Even  in 
Europe,  the  extremities  of  which  have  alone  been  touched  by 
Islamism,  the  Begs  of  Bosnia,  the  "  true  believers"  of  Albania, 
the  Pomaks  of  Mahometan  Bulgars,  the  Mussulmans  of  Candia 
and  Crimea,  of  Greek  or  Goth  origin,  are  descended  from  apostate 
Christians,  while  it  would  be  difficult  to  quote  a  Mahometan  peo- 
ple, nay  a  single  tribe,  ever  having  embraced  the  Christian  faith. 
The  reason  does  not  lie  merely  in  the  fact  that  Islam  seems 
adapted  to  certain  races  and  certain  modes  of  life,  but  also  in  the 
reciprocal  position,  in  the  dogma,  and,  it  may  be  said,  in  the 
respective  ages  of  the  two  religions.  Islam  is  a  more  recent 
doctrine  than  Christianity,  and,  in  a  great  measure,  aimed  directly 


RACES  AND  NATIONALITY.  85 

against  the  latter.  It  is,  from  the  standpoint  of  dogma,  a  simpler 
faith,  at  least  apparently, — more  strictly  monotheistic  freer  from 
any  kind  of  anthropomorphism. 

The  Mussulman  emigrates  or  dies  out  where  the  Christian 
rules,  but  does  not  become  a  convert,  so  that  the  mixing  of  the 
two  races  hardly  can  take  place  in  any  way  but  exchange  of  one 
&ith  for  the  other.  It  is  certain  that,  in  Russia,  the  force  of 
example  and  self-interest, — ^proselytism,  private  or  official,  have,  in 
the  last  three  or  four  hundred  years,  effected  many  a  conquest 
amidst  the  Tatars  in  favor  of  Christianity.*  Several  of  the 
greatest  Russian  families  come  from  this  source,  and,  when  bap- 
tized, the  neophytes  exchanged  the  title  of  a  Tatar  Murza  for 
that  of  a  Russian  Kniaz  %•  but  such  apostasies,  even  when  accom- 

*  About  one-eleventh  part  (40,000  out  of  450,000)  of  the  Tatars  residing 
in  the  government  of  Kazdn  were  baptized  by  the  Russian  authorities  in 
the  eighteenth  century.  They  still  are  Christian  in  name  ;  but,  their  baptism 
notwithstanding,  they  are  not  yet  russified :  they  retain  their  language, 
their  own  peculiar  customs,  generally  even  their  faith  in  the  Koran.  (See 
vol.  iii.,  book  iii.,  ch.  iii.) 

*  The  thoroughly  national  title  kniaz  (the  k  to  be  well  sounded),  is  that 
■which  is  uniformly  rendered  in  all  other  European  languages  by  "  prince." 
Nothing  could  be  more  misleading,  for  the  word  "  prince "  represents 
something  that  does  not  exist  in  Russia,  at  least  not  in  the  form  familiar  to 
Other  nations,  those  that  have  passed  through  the  feudal  system,  which  we 
have  been  spared.  The  title  ought  to  be  retained  in  its  Russian  form.  A 
slightly  parallel  case  is  that  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  "jarl,"  now  "  earl,"  which 
is  inadequately  rendered  in  other  languages  by  the  lyatin  "  count "  {comes) 
and  the  German  "  Graf."  But  more  of  this  in  its  proper  place. — As  to  the 
families  of  Tatar  origin,  they  are  quite  numerous  in  the  higher  nobility, 
and  the  women  especially  show  it  in  their  hair,  which  is  dark,  very  long 
and  silky,  without  a  wave  or  ripple,  and  sometimes  in  the  color  of  their 
skin,  which  is  of  a  warm  creamy  tinge,  not  unfrequently  leaning  markedly 
to  yellow  and,  unlike  the  dead  olive  complexions  of  so  many  Spanish 
women,  capable  of  vivid  bloom  and  quick  blush.  The  names  of  such 
families  often  betray  their  origin.  Thus  "Bahmetief"  (aspirate  the  h 
strongly)  is  corrupted  from  "Mehmet."  The  coats-of-arms  improvised  for 
the  new  Russian  nobles  also  show  transparent  devices, — none  prettier  than 
that  of  a  kinsman  of  the  last  Khan  of  Kazan,  who,  having  adopted  Chris- 
tianity, was  given  a  wife  from  among  the  noblest  maidens,  with  large  landed 
possessions  :  the  family  'scutcheon  bears  across  the  lo^er  field  a  gold 
crescent  on  argent  ground — symbol  of  the  ancestral  faith, — while  the  upper 


86      THE  EMPIRE   OF   THE   TSARS  AND   THE  RUSSIANS. 

plished  wholesale,  have  been  relatively  rare  occurrences.  They 
took  place  amidst  populations  in  great  part  already  mixed 
with  new  Christian  masters  or  old  Finn  subjects.  Outside  of 
Russia,  nay,  in  their  very  cradles,  the  Tatars  must  have  under- 
gone a  certain  amount  of  crossing  with  Caucasian  races, — first  in 
Turkestan,  where  from  times  immemorial  Eranians  have  dwelt 
in  great  numbers ;  then  along  the  highroads  of  invasion,  especially 
in  the  Caucasus,  where  the  community  of  religion  facilitated 
alliances  which  the  beauty  of  the  Tcherkess  women  made  desira- 
ble in  the  eyes  of  the  Turks  of  the  Volga  as  well  as  those  of  the 
Turks  of  the  Bosporus. 

If  then  a  noticeable  strain  of  Tatar  blood  has  very  gradually 
filtered  into  the  veins  of  the  Russian  people,  it  possibly  came  less 
fi-om  the  hordes  of  Batu  and  the  invaders  of  the  thirteenth  cen- 
tury than  fi-om  the  kindred  tribes  who,  for  thousands  of  years, 
have  dwelt  or  roamed  in  the  south  of  Russia,  from  the  Sc5rthians 
of  old  to  the  Khazars,  the  Petchen^g,  the  P61ovtsi  of  the  Middle 
Ages.  Under  the  vague  designations  of  "Scythians,"  the 
ancients  used  to  mix  up  populations  between  whom  there  was  no 
ethnical  relationship  whatever.  It  appears  that  amongst  these 
Scythians  there  were  some  Aryan  ones  ;  but  the  majority  of  them 
seem  to  have  been  derived  from  a  Finno-Turkish  stock.  That 
such  was  the  case  is  more  certain  still  concerning  the  Khazars, 
the  Kumans,  and  other  nomads  who,  up  to  the  great  invasion, 
wrangled  for  the  possession  of  the  south  of  Russia.  These  now 
extinct  peoples  were  for  a  long  time  the  only  denizens  of  this 
immense  territory,  of  which  the  Greeks  and  Italicans  knew  only 

field  is  divided  in  two  compartments,  one  of  which  has  a  crooked  scimitar 
on  gules  ground — a  reminder  of  the  founder's  bravery  in  battle, — and  the 
other  a  star  on  azure  ground,  in  poetical  allusion  to  the  lady.  It  may  be 
mentioned  here  that,  however  correct  our  author's  remarks  are  concerning 
the  frequency  of  Christian  apostasy,  they  do  not  apply  to  the  Russian  Slavs, 
who  have  never  been  known  to  forsake  orthodox  Christianity  for  any  other 
religion.  The  only  exception  is  the  adoption  of  the  Jewish  religion  by  a 
very  few  ignorant  fanatics,  under  very  peculiar  circumstances, — an  exceed- 
ingly curious  phenomenon,  of  which  more  hereafter. 


RACES  AND  NATIONALITY.  8/ 

the  coastland.  Must  we  infer  from  this  that  they  were  the 
ancestors  of  the  thinly  scattered  population  of  these  even  yet  half 
desert  plains?  The  territory  of  all  these  barbarians,  was  the 
"woodless  zone,"  the  steppe-zone,  where  the  population  is  still 
either  very  much  scattered  or  very  recent.  In  order  to  open 
these  plains  to  culture,  the  nomads  had  first  to  be  driven  off. 
The  Scythians  and  all  their  Turko-Finn  kindred  were  pastoral 
nomads,  who,  with  their  wagons  and  flocks,  led  in  the  steppes, 
this  side  of  the  Volga  and  the  Don,  the  life  that  their  brethren, 
the  Kirghiz,  even  now  lead  on  the  other  side  of  these  rivers.  All 
these  peoples,  so  much  dreaded  by  the  West,  and  so  soon  van- 
ished from  the  ken  of  history,  were  as  insignificant  in  numbers  as 
the  Asiatic  tribes  of  the  same  race,  who  maintain,  to  this  day,  the 
same  kind  of  existence.  One  famine,  one  epidemic,  one  battle, 
suflSced  for  their  annihilation.  They  destroyed  one  another, 
leaving  of  themselves  no  other  vestiges  but  their  names.  It  is 
in  the  southern  half  of  Russia  that  we  must  seek  for  traces  of  the 
Scythian  or  Tatar  element,  and  it  is  from  the  west  and  north,  from 
the  wooded  regions,  that  the  present  inhabitants  of  Southern  Russia 
have  emerged  gradually,  we  might  almost  say  under  our  eyes. 

Great  has  been  the  influence  of  the  Tatars,  but  more  histori- 
cally than  ethnologically ;  it  had  to  do  with  the  conquest  more 
than  with  the  fusion  of  the  races.  However,  while  confuting  a 
popular  prejudice,  we  should  not  rush  into  the  opposite  excess ; 
the  Tatar's  share  in  the  formation  of  the  Russian  people  has  been 
the  smallest  possible,  but  cannot  be  quite  explained  away.  On 
more  than  one  point  there  has  been  some  mingling  of  blood 
between  the  Turk  and  Slav  tribes  whence  Russians  have  sprung, 
— on  the  banks  of  the  Dniepr,  when  the  rulers  of  Kief  were 
collecting  the  remnants  of  the  Pblovtsi  and  the  Petchen^g, — on 
the  same  river,  on  the  Don,  on  the  Volga,  amidst  the  Cosacks, 
who,  both  in  peace  and  war,  frequently  entertained  close  relations 
with  their  Moslem  neighbors  and  foes.  However  that  may  be, 
the  ethnical  influence  of  the  Tatars,  even  in  the  south,  always 


88      THE  EMPIRE  OF  THE   TSARS  AND   THE  RUSSIANS. 

remained  far  behind  that  of  the  Finns  in  the  north,  all  the  more 
that  the  Tatars  themselves  were  frequently  crossed  with  Finns. 

Crimea  and  the  region  which,  as  late  as  the  last  century,  went 
by  the  name  of  I^ittle  Tartary,  is,  after  all,  perhaps  the  country 
where  it  is  easiest  to  study  the  manners  and  character  of  the 
Tatars.  Scarcely  a  hundred  years  ago  they  were  the  masters 
and  almost  the  only  occupants  of  this  region.  In  consequence 
of  repeated  emigrations,  they  are,  this  day,  two  or  three  times 
inferior  in  numbers  to  the  Russian  or  foreign  colonists  who  have 
taken  their  place ;  in  certain  portions  of  the  peninsula,  however, 
you  still  feel  that  they  are  at  home.  On  the  steppe-land  which 
occupies  the  centre  and  north,  rebellious  against  culture,  they 
continue  to  lead  their  nomadic  life.  In  the  fertile  regions,  they 
still  own  towns,  of  which  they  are  themselves  the  chief  and  almost 
only  population,  as  for  instance  Karasu-Bazar,  or  Bakhtchi-Saray, 
the  old  capital  of  the  Crimean  khans.  There,  in  a  cool  and  narrow 
valley,  around  the  verdant  gardens  and  the  marble  fountain-basins 
of  the  palace  of  the  Ghir^y,  lives  a  Moslem  community  more 
purely  oriental  than  those  of  the  cities  of  European  Turkey  or  of 
the  littoral  of  Asia  Minor.  There  the  Mahometan  law  holds  its 
sway  in  all  its  rigor,  and  were  it  not  for  the  loneliness  of  the 
palace  halls,  with  hangings  and  furniture  all  untouched,  as  they 
were  under  the  last  of  the  khans,  nothing  would  recall  the  fall  of 
the  Tatar's  might. 

The  Turks  of  Bakhtchi-Saray  and  KarasA-Bazar  are  traders 
and  farmers.  So  are  those  of  the  Volga.  Having  come  to  a  land 
of  bountiful  soil,  they  abandoned  their  nomadic  mode  of  life  and 
became  craftsmen  or  traders  in  the  cities,  tillers  of  the  soil  in  the 
country.  At  Kaz^,  once  the  capital  of  the  most  powerful  of 
the  three  khanates  which  sprang  from  the  dismemberment  of  the 
Golden  Horde,  the  Tatars  inhabit  a  suburb  (jslobodd,)*  of  their  own, 

•  The  word  slobodd  means  "  a  free  place,"  probably  because  suburban 
life  may  have  been  free  from  much  of  the  restraint  imposed  on  those  that  dwelt 
in  the  city  proper;  also  the  suburb  may  have  enjoyed  some  local  franchises. 


RACES  AND  NATIONALITY.  89 

situated  at  the  foot  of  their  former  capital,  far  removed  from  the 
Kremlin,  taken  from  them  by  the  Orthodox  Tsars.  Their  suburb 
looks  clean,  quiet,  and  prosperous.  They  have  their  mosques  and 
schools,*  with  their  mollahs  elected  by  the  community  and  acting 
as  arbiters  and  judges,  according  to  Moslem  custom. 

At  Kaz^n,  as  well  as  in  Crimea,  the  Tatars  have  preserved  the 
specialty  of  certain  oriental  industries,  such  as  the  manufacturing 
of  articles  in  leather  and  morocco :  boots,  slippers  (babushes), 
saddles,  sheaths  for  swords  and  daggers,  etc.  Many  of  them  still 
boast  the  muscular  strength  which  is  proverbially  attributed  to 
the  Turks,  and  the  porters  at  the  great  Nijni  fair  are  almost  all 
Tatars.  The  high  walks  of  commerce  are  not  closed  against  them, 
and  at  Kaz^n  more  than  one  of  their  merchants  have  achieved  a 
considerable  fortune.  And  although  there  are  many  differences 
among  them,  as  well  physical  as  moral,  they  are,  on  the  whole, 
saving  and  painstaking,  and  noted  for  domestic  morality  and  the 
harmony  prevailing  in  their  families.  In  all  these  qualities,  the 
Turks  of  Russia  are  in  no  wise  inferior  to  those  of  the  Ottoman 
Empire,  whose  virtues  in  private  life  are  unanimously  extolled  by 
travellers.  For  certain  pursuits  the  Tatars  are  often  preferred  by 
the  Russians  themselves.  Being  noted  for  cleanliness,  probity, 
sobriety,  they  are  sought  for  in  several  crafts,  and  have  made  a 
sort  of  monopoly  of  certain  employments,  especially  such  as  require 
most  honesty  and  trustworthiness.  The  great  Russian  families, 
who  own  villas  on  the  south  coast  of  Crimea,  are  not  afraid  of 
taking  into  their  homes  Tatar  servants,  and  in  the  restaurants 
of  Petersburgh  it  is  quite  "the  thing"  for  the  waiters  to  be 
Tatars  from  the  government  of  Riazan,  so  that  the  unsuspecting 

*  In  these,  as  in  all  moslem  schools,  the  ground  work  of  instruction  is 
Arabic,  the  language  of  the  Koran,  which  is  frequently  recited  without 
being  understood.  This  barbarous  method  is  a  great  obstacle  to  the  intellect- 
ual growth  of  the  Tatars.  Therefore  the  government  is  making  praise- 
worthy efforts  to  introduce  among  them  instruction  in  the  Tatar  language, 
in  expectation  of  the  time  when  it  will  be  possible  to  get  them  to  use  the 
Russian  language. 


90      THE  EMPIRE   OF   THE    TSARS  AND    THE  RUSSIANS. 

foreigner  who  orders  his  dinner  from  a  French  menu,  is  waited 
on,  in  perfect  ignorance  of  the  fact,  by  descendants  of  Djinghiz  or 
Bath's  rider-warriors. 

The  qualities  of  the  Tatars  come  in  part  from  their  religion, 
which  enjoins  temperance  as  an  absolute  duty  ;  their  faults,  the 
causes  that  hamper  their  progress,  come  from  the  same  source. 
The  race's  only  apparent  inferiority  consists  in  a  lack  of  origi- 
naUty.  Their  ancient  cities  have  perished.  In  order  to  find 
monuments  of  their  domination,  we  must  go  as  far  as  Turkestan, 
Samarkand,  and  there  we  find  buildings  entirely  in  Persian  style 
and  taste.  In  Russia  nothing  is  so  rare  as  constructions  from  the 
time  of  the  khans.  In  Crimea,  besides  the  palace  of  Bakhtchi-Saray, 
of  late  date  and  poor  merit,  nothing  is  left  but  a  few  mosques,  of 
which  the  handsomest  do  not  amount  to  much.  Kazan  boasts  a 
grotesque  brick  pyramid  in  four  tiers,  held  in  great  veneration 
by  the  Tatars,  but  probably  built  after  the  Russian  conquest. 
It  is  in  a  city  destroyed  by  the  Tatars  themselves  at  the  time  of 
Tamerlan's  invasion,  in  Bolgdrj',  near  the  left  bank  of  the  Volga, 
that  the  most  interesting  Oriental  ruins  of  all  Russia  are  to  be 
seen — two  constructions  with  cupolas,  which  will  soon  have 
crumbled  to  pieces,  and  whose  graceful  Arabic  architecture,  seen 
from  afar,  recalls  the  beautiful  tombs  around  Cairo.  The  Turks 
of  the  Volga,  like  those  of  Central  Asia,  and  the  Ottomans  of  the 
Bosporus,  show  in  everything  they  do,  in  architecture  as  well  as 
in  poetry,  imitation  of  the  Arabic  or  Persian  genius.  Such  a 
lack  of  originality  makes  their  entire  culture  dependent  on  foreign 
contact,  and  the  civilization  which  they  have  received  from  their 
Mussulman  neighbors,  their  religion  forbids  them  to  improve  on, 
except  with  the  loss  of  their  independence. 

On  due  reflection,  it  will  appear  that  the  main  vice  of  Islam, 
the  main  cause  of  its  political  inferiority,  lies  neither  in  its  dogma, 
nor  even  in  its  morals  ;  it  lies  in  the  confusion  of  things  spiritual 
and  temporal,  of  the  religious  and  civil  law.  The  Koran  being 
both  Bible  and  Code,  the  Prophet's  word  standing  for  law,  the 


RACES  AND  NATIONALITY.  9I 

laws  and  customs  are  once  for  all  consecrated  by  religion."  This 
one  fact  is  suflScient  to  keep  the  entire  Moslem  civilization  at  a 
standstill.  Indefinite  progress,  which  constitutes  the  very  essence 
of  Christian  civilization,  is  to  them  an  impossibility  ;  whatever 
the  seeming  rapidity  of  its  development,  society,  as  a  whole,  is, 
with  them,  in  reality  and  of  necessity,  immovable.  This  inferi- 
ority of  Islam,  however,  is  more  felt  in  public  than  in  private  life ; 
it  aflfects  nations  rather  than  individuals,  for,  when  subjected  to 
foreign  influences,  Mussulmans  can  accept  ideas  and  customs 
which  could  not  have  originated  in  their  midst.  The  Mahometans 
may  experience  the  same  thing  that  happened  to  the  Jews,  no 
less  handicapped  by  their  religious  law,  in  the  midst  of  Christian 
society  :  had  the  Jews  ever  ceased  to  form  a  compact  nation,  they 
could  not,  without  great  effort,  have  risen  to  a  civilization  more 
complete  than  that  of  the  Moslem  nations.  For  these,  as  for  the 
Jews,  Christian  domination  may  prove  beneficial  in  the  end,  since 
from  political  subjection  can  spring  moral  emancipation.  Thus 
it  is  that,  wherever  the  Russian  Tatars  form  a  minority,  and  have 
been  most  affected  by  alien  influences,  they  have  done  away  with 
the  external  sign  of  Islam :  the  veil  and  seclusion  of  women. 
While  yet  in  strictest  use  at  Bakhtchi-Saray,  in  the  centre  of 
Crimea,  the  veil  has  been  doffed  by  the  Moslem  women  of  the 
south  coast.  The  same  influences  are  driving  out  polygamy,  as 
they  put  an  end  to  slavery.  The  Tatars,  broken  up  into  small 
groups  scattered  over  Russia,  are  inclined  to  pass  through  the 
same  phases  as  the  Jews,  who,  while  retaining  their  worship, 
gradually  fall  into  our  modes  of  life.  Islam  would  probably 
not  oppose  a  greater  obstacle  to  their  entrance  into  our 
civilization,  than  Judaism  to  that  of  the  Israelites,  hampered  by 

*  Yet,  must  not  those  who  do  not  dissever  religion  from  practical  life,  but 
try  to  think  and  act  up  to  the  teachings  of  what  they  have  accepted  as  the 
"Sacred  Word,"  possess  a  real  moral  superiority  over  those  who  would 
laugh  to  scorn  the  notion  of  introducing  what  they  themselves  proclaim  as 
the  standard  of  absolute  goodness  and  uprightness  into,  say,  their  business 
dealings  ? 


92       THE  EMPIRE   OF   THE    TSARS  AND    THE  RUSSIANS. 

far  narrower  ritualistic  prescriptions.  Without  amalgamating 
with  the  bulk  of  the  population,  the  Mussulmans  who  stayed  in 
Russia  will  for  a  longer  or  lesser  space  of  time,  preserve  their 
language  and  customs  and  form  a  peaceable,  industrious  class, 
who  will  play  a  part  very  much  like  that  now  filled  by  the  Jews 
and  Armenians,  with  this  difference — that,  dwelling  in  the  coimtry 
as  well  as  in  the  cities,  practising  agriculture  as  well  as  trade, 
their  agglomeration  in  the  eastern  provinces  can  never  give  rise 
to  the  same  economical  disasters  which  are  caused,  in  the  west, 
by  the  agglomeration  of  the  Jews,  who  are  almost  exclusively 
devoted  to  city  life  and  trade.*  * 

From  the  political  point  of  view,  the  Tatars  of  European 
Russia  even  now  are  scarcely  more  troublesome  to  the  government 
than  its  Russian  or  Finn  subjects.  This  was  seen  during  the 
Crimean  war  :  although  they  made  at  the  time  a  full  half  of  the 
population,  they  rendered  hardly  any  service  at  all  to  the  invaders, 

*  The  polonized  Tatars,  who,  residing  in  Lithuania,  lost  their  language 
centuries  ago,  yet  preserved  their  religion,  and  who  are  mostly  tanners  and 
traders,  afford  a  glimpse  of  what  their  brethren  of  the  Volga  may  become 
one  day,  when  they  are  russified. 

*  It  is  a  fact  which  cannot  be  sufficiently  emphasized,  in  view  of  the 
senseless  accusations  oi  religious  animosity  continually  thrown  in  our  faces, 
that  there  is  not  and  never  was  the  slightest  ill-feeling  on  the  part  of 
the  Russian  people  towards  any  of  the  numerous  aliens  who  live  side  by 
side  with  them  as  fellow-subjects — with  the  single  exception  of  the  Jews, 
meaning  of  course  not  the  educated  Jews,  the  "gentlemen,"  who  practise 
various  liberal  professions,  who  have  crafts,  commercial  and  industrial 
positions,  or  those  who,  in  Russia  as  everywhere  else,  rule  the  financial  and 
high  business  world,  but  those  wretched,  squalid  millions  which,  granting 
it  is  their  misfortune  and  not  their  fault,  still  certainly  are  a  terrible  evil ; 
and  the  animosity  of  the  lower  classes — exasperated  because  of  the  close 
companionship  forced  on  them,  from  which  they  have  no  possible  escape — 
has  nothing  whatever  to  do  with  either  religion  or  race.  Naturally  benig- 
nant and  tolerant,  the  Russians  know  not  of  such  feelings.  Beyond  good- 
natured  banter,  expressed  in  some  long-standing  nicknames,  proverbial  saws, 
their  race  feeling  does  not  go ;  only  they  do  not  intermarry,  a  few  may 
not  like  to  eat  at  the  same  board  with  their  alien  fellow-subjects.  This 
latter,  however,  is  the  case  with  many  religious  sects  composed  of  none 
but  thorough-going  Russians. 


RACES  AND  NATIONALITY.  93 

in  whose  ranks  were  their  brethren  of  the  Bosporus.  The  Bul- 
garian war,  the  fall  of  Khiva,  and  the  submission  of  the  other 
khanates  of  Turkestan  robbed  them  of  their  last  illusions.  Divided, 
even  more  than  the  Finns,  into  minute  scattered  groups,  locked 
in  on  all  sides  by  Russians,  the  Russian  Turks  are  no  longer  a 
people  ;  religion  has,  for  them,  necessarily  stepped  into  the  place 
of  nationality,  and  repeated  emigrations  rid  them  of  their  fanatics. 
Everywhere  in  Emrope,  in  the  very  places  where  they  ruled 
longest,  the  Tatars  incline  to  become  a  minority  and  this  dispro- 
portion will  go  on  increasing  as  the  colonization  of  the  Russian 
Bast  progresses.  In  Europe,  including  the  inhabitants  of  Northern 
Caucasus,  Russia  numbers  only  3,200,000  Mahometan  subjects. 
Setting  aside  the  Caucasus,  both  slopes  of  which  are  comprised 
in  the  same  political  circumscription,  the  number  of  the  Mussul- 
mans sinks  to  2,500,000  and  from  this  figure  we  must,  if  we  wish 
to  deal  with  genuine  Tatars,  descendants  of  the  invaders  of  the 
Golden  Horde,  deduct  the  Bashkirs  and  the  tatarized  tribes  in 
which  Finnic  blood  is  predominant.  Not  quite  1,200,000  is  all 
that  remains  of  that  Turk  or  Tatar  race  which  so  long  ruled 
Russia  and  terrified  Europe.  In  Russian  Asia,  their  kindred  by 
blood  and  brethren  in  religion  are,  in  the  first  place,  the  Klirghiz, 
the  most  extensive  of  all  the  Turkish  branches ;  in  Turkestan, 
the  Turkmen  or  Turcomans,  and  the  Uzbegs ;  in  the  Caucasus, 
the  Tatars  (Sunnites  or  Shiites)  from  the  banks  of  the  Kura  and 
the  Araxus,  the  Kumuhs  and  a  few  other  small  tribes  ;  lastly,  in 
Siberia,  some  few  Mahometans  with  more  or  less  claim  to  the 
name  of  Tatars,  with  sundry  tribes,  now  Christian  and  three 
quarters  russified.*  In  Europe  the  Mussulmans  exceed  a  half 
of  the  population  only  in  one  government,  that  of  Ufa,  and  that 
only,  thanks  to  the  Bashkirs,  in  a  half  Asiatic  region  which  is 

*  We  do  not  cotint  here  the  Tunguz,  nor  the  Mandshu,  nor  even  the 
Yakut,  who  are  ranked  amongst  the  peoples  of  Turkish  stock,  but  who 
are  separated  from  the  Tatar  group  proper  by  distance  and  religion. 


94      THE  EMPIRE  OF   THE    TSARS  AND   THE  RUSSIANS. 

just  being  colonized.  In  those  of  the  other  provinces  where  they 
are  most  numerous — in  the  Governments  of  Kaz^n,  Orenburg, 
Astrakhan,  the  Mahometans  do  not  number  even  one  third  of  the 
entire  population.  Even  along  the  Lower  Volga,  the  majority 
has  passed  over  to  the  Christians. 


\ 


BOOK  II.     CHAPTER  IV. 

The  Slavic  Element  and  Russian  Nationality — Slavs  and  Panslavism — Slavs 
and  Letto-Litliuanians — Formation  of  the  Russian  People  :  Its  Different 
Tribes — Differences  between  them,  of  Origin  and  Character — Great- 
Russians  (  Velikorhss)  —  White-Russians  {Bieloriiss) — Little-Russians 
{Malordss) — Ukrai'nophilism. 

Above  the  Finns  and  Tatars,  whose  ethnological  part  in  the 

making  of  Russia  has  been  very  unequal,  comes  the  race  which  has 

subjugated  or  absorbed  all  the  others,  the  race  whose  name  sounds 

proudly  to  every   Russian  ear — the  Slav    race.     On  the  place 

belonging  to  the  Slavs  and  their  kith  and  kin  there  is  no  possible 

doubt.     lyike  the  Celts,  the  I<atins,  the  Teutons,  they  are  part 

of  the  great  Aryan  race  to  which  the  sovereignty  over  the  world 

seems  to  have  fallen.     To  this  common  origin  their  physical  type 

bears  witness  ;  so  do  their  language  and  primeval  traditions.    I^ike 

Greek,  Latin,  and  German,  the  Slavic  languages  are,  sooth  to  say, 

but  dialects  of  that  Indo-European  speech,  of  which  Sanskrit  is 

the  oldest  known  form.     The  Slavic  legends  and  tales,  like  the 

German  ones,  complete  the  data  from  which  sprang  the  myths  of 

India  and  Greece.*    The  Slavs  are  no  more  Asiatic  than  we  are, 

or,  if  they  are,  it  is  only  in  the  manner  and  degree  that  we  are 

ourselves.     Their  establishment  in  Europe  dates  back  beyond  all 

historic  times.     It  is  not  known  whether  the  Teutons  or  they 

were  the  first  to  leave  Asia  ;  at  all  events  there  can  have  been  but 

a  short  interval  between  the  two  migrations.     Between  the  great 

*  We  have  at  present  a  great  number  of  collections  of  Slavic  tales  from 
all  the  Slav  countries.  For  Russia,  must  be  quoted  first  of  all  Afandssiefs 
Collection :  Narddnyia  Riisskiya  SkAzki  (Popular  Russian  Tales) ;  then 
come  those  of  Khudiakdf,  Erlenwein,  Tchudinsky,  etc.  For  Little -Russia, 
those  of  Rudch^nko  and  K^lish. 

95 


96      THE  EMPIRE   OF   THE    TSARS  AND   THE  RUSSIANS. 

Aryan  tribes  who  have  divided  Europe  amongst  themselves,  it  is 
difficult  to  decide  the  question  as  to  degree  of  consanguinity. 
The  philologplsts  insist  on  a  closer  tie  between  the  Slavs  and  the 
Teutons ;  but  if  the  Slavs,  as  to  language,  seem  to  stand  somewhat 
nearer  to  their  Teutonic  neighbors,  they  lean  more,  in  character, 
towards  the  Europeans  of  the  West  and  South.  From  the  remotest 
times  we  find  them  settled  in  Europe,  on  the  Visla  and  the  Dniepr. 
Through  the  obscurities  of  primeval  history  it  is  difficult  to 
make  out  the  original  type  of  these  Slav  tribes.  Classical  an- 
tiquity confounds  all  alien  peoples,  whether  Celts,  Teutons,  or 
Slavs,  under  the  sweeping  designation  of  "barbarians,"  paint- 
ing them  with  the  same  colors,  attributing  to  them  the  same 
customs,  from  which  it  would  appear  that  these  tribes  did  not 
then  differ  as  much  as  they  have  done  subsequently,  and  showed 
more  traces  of  their  common  origin.  From  these  descriptions 
(often  just  as  applicable  to  the  barbarians  of  neighboring  races), 
the  ancient  Slavs,  whom  we  recognize  under  the  names  of  the 
Antes,  Vends,  Slovens,  appear  to  have  been  of  large,  robust 
build,  with  blue  or  gray  eyes,  hair  yellow,  chestnut,  or  auburn, — 
all  features  frequently  met  with  in  the  Russians.*    Prehistoric 

*  It  is  perhaps  at  Petersburgh,  in  the  Museum  at  the  Hermitage,  that 
•we  are  to  look  for  the  portraits  of  the  first  Russian  Slavs,  on  the  admirable 
jewels  found  in  the  tumuli  of  Crimea,  at  the  gates  of  Panticapaeon  (modem 
Kertch),  the  ancient  capital  of  the  Cimmerian  Bosporus.  There,  on  golden 
belt-buckles  or  silver  cups  and  dishes,  we  have  before  us,  after  a  lapse  of 
over  twenty  centuries,  the  live  presentation  of  the  Scythian  horseman  and 
archer,  in  high  boots,  tight-fitting  trousers,  short  tunic,  recalling  the  Russian 
shirt  or  blouse.  Besides  the  Greek  jewels  from  Kertch,  as  superior  to  those 
from  Pompeii,  as  Athenian  art  was  to  Roman  art,  similar  figures  ornament 
less  handsome  jewels  which  were  discovered  in  the  tombs  of  the  southern 
steppes,  and  appear  to  be  the  handiwork  of  the  Scythians  themselves, 
already  suflBciently  in  love  with  Greek  art  to  try  and  imitate  it  On  all  these 
jewels  occur  types  belonging  to  other  races,  some  of  them  manifestly  Aryan, 
others  showing  a  mixture  of  Finno-Turkish  blood.' 

'  This,  then  would  be  the  first  historical  instance  of  one  of  our  race's 
chief  characteristics :  its  rare  aptitude  in  appropriating  every  kind  of  learn- 
ing, art,  or  craft,  every  trick  of  brain,  or  tongue,  or  hand,  and  its  facile 
ioutativeness.  Most  precious  qualities  these  for  a  young  race,  the  latest 
Come  among  the  makers  of  human  culture,  who  had  to  master  all  that  had 
been  done  before  it  could  produce  original  work  of  its  own. 


RACES  AND  NATIONALITY.  gj 

archj3eology  seldom  yields  information  more  precise.  As  the 
Germans,  so  the  Aryans  of  the  East  appear  to  have  greatly 
changed  in  the  course  of  the  ages.  Thus,  for  instance,  the  oldest 
tombs  of  the  Slavic  countries,  in  the  neighborhood  of  Cracow, 
to  name  one  place,  have  supplied  skulls  of  elongated  shape  or 
dolichocephalous — of  the  purest  Aryan  type.  Many  Slav  peoples 
of  our  day  have  lost  this  feature,  so  long  regarded  as  characteristic 
of  the  Indo-European  race,  or  have  it  in  a  degree  inferior  to  most 
I^atin  or  Teutonic  peoples.  Therefore,  in  the  ethnological  classi- 
fications founded  solely  on  the  shape  of  the  skull,  they  have  some- 
times been  placed  side  by  side  with  the  Finns  amongst  the 
brachycephalians  or  shortheads,  while  their  Aryan  brethren  were, 
together  with  the  Semites,  classed  with  the  longheads.  However 
imperfect  such  a  classification  may  be,  it  has  the  advantage  of 
showing  that,  even  if  crossed  with  Finns,  the  Russians  are  not 
removed  as  far  from  the  other  Slavs  as  is  often  fancied.* 

It  is  no  easy  task  to  depict  the  intellectual  qualities  of  this 
race,  which  strives  for  the  sovereignty  of  the  world  with  the 
Latins  and  Teutons.  It  needs  a  long  career  of  civiUzation  to 
bring  out  the  genius  of  races  and  nations  in  literature,  in  art,  in 
political  institutions.  Most  Slavs  are  too  young,  too  new  to 
independent  life  and  to  European  culture,  for  their  national 
individuaUty  to  have  come  out  in  as  strong  relief  as  that  of  their 
rivals.  They  were  long  despised  by  the  nations  of  the  West,  who, 
out  of  their  name  (as  ikey  pronounced  it),  Schiavoni,  Esdavons, 
made  the  word  schiavo,  esdave, — slave ;  scorned  to  this  day  by 
their  German  neighbors,  who  persist  in  seeing  in  them  mere 
"ethnological  material"   {ethnologischer  Stoff)  ;    yet  they  owed 

*  It  is  notorious  that,  in  our  modem  races,  all  produced  by  mixture,  too 
much  importance  has  been  given  this  trait,  and  that,  on  the  showing  of  the 
latest  researches,  many  Germans,  especially  of  South  Germany,  are,  as  well 
as  numbers  of  French,  shortheads.  It  would  be  of  greater  importance, 
should  it  turn  out,  as  some  scientists  assert,  that  the  Slavs  had  a  smaller 
head  and  a  brain  less  voluminous  than  the  Western  Europeans.  But  even 
should  the  fact  be  proved,  it  would  be  sufficiently  accounted  for  by  the 
relative  antiquity  of  culture  in  Western  Europe. 

7 


98      THE   EMPIRE  OF  THE    TSARS  AND   THE  RUSSIANS. 

their  inferiority  probably  only  to  their  geographical  position. 
Standing,  as  they  did,  in  the  East,  so  to  speak  at  the  entrance  of 
Europe,  in  the  most  massive  part  of  the  continent  and  the  most 
exposed  to  invasions  from  Asia,  they  were  naturally  the  last  to 
become  civilized  and  the  least  deeply  aflfected  by  civilization. 
Feeling  themselves  unqualified  to  lay  claim  to  the  culture  of 
modem  Europe,  some  Slavs  have  claimed  that  of  the  ancient 
world.  Certain  Serb  and  Bulgar  writers  have  taken  it  into  their 
heads  to  demand  as  their  rightful  patrimony  the  greater  part  of 
Greek  civilization,  from  Thracian  Orpheus  to  Macedonian  Alex- 
ander. Such  vindications,  based  on  popular  Bulgarian  songs  of 
doubtful  authenticity,  unfortunately  rest  more  on  patriotism  than 
on  science.* 

Having  been  and  remained  almost  total  strangers  to  the  dis- 
cipline of  Rome  and  Greece,  the  Slavs,  by  their  situation,  by  their 
lang^iage  and  religfion,  have  stood  more  or  less  aloof  from  the 
chief  intellectual  centres  of  modem  Europe,  nor  could  they  have 
taken  the  same  share  in  her  work  as  did  the  two  other  great 
European  families.  It  is  no  use  denying  it ;  as  the  ancient  civili- 
zation, so  the  modem,  which  they  are  enjoying  themselves  and  of 
which,  in  the  East,  they  have  made  themselves  the  apostles,  was 
accomplished  nearly  without  their  help.  Neither  the  Russians 
nor  the  Southern  Slavs  have  contributed  one  stone  to  the  build- 
ing, and  it  could  easily  have  dispensed  with  the  assistance  of  the 
Western  Slavs  likewise— those  of  Poland  and  Bohemia.  Had 
there  been  no  Slavs  at  all, — had  Europe  ended  at  the  foot  of  the 
Carinthian  Alps  and  the  Boehmerwald,  her  civilization  would 
not  have  been  less  complete,  while  it  could  not  have  been  robbed, 
without  mutilation,  of  the  share  borne  in  the  work  by  either  of 
the  great  Latin  or  Teuton  nations.     Relegated  to  the  uttermost 

*  This  system  has  been  more  particularly  formulated  by  Mr.  Verkovitch 
in  a  collection  entitled  The  Slavic  Veda  ( Veda  Slavena,  Belgrad,  1874),  a 
work  which  the  more  competent  Slavists  regard  as  a  mystification.  See  on 
this  subject  1,.  L^ger,  Nouvelles  Etudes  Slaves  (New  Slavic  Studies  J,  Paris, 
1880. 


RACES  AND  NATIONALITY.  99 

end  of  Christendom,  the  Slavs  hardly  cotild  serve  it  in  any  way 
but  with  their  arms,  guarding  its  boundaries,  from  the  Save  and 
Danube  to  the  Dniepr  and  Volga,  against  invasion  from  Asia.' 

Is  the  race  deficient  in  genius  ?  Assuredly  not.  It  is  a  note- 
worthy fact  that  it  was  Slavs  who  opened  the  way  to  the  West  in 
the  two  great  movements  which  inaugurated  the  modem  era — in 
the  Renaissance  and  the  Reformation,  in  the  discovery  of  the  laws 
that  rule  the  universe,  and  in  the  vindication  of  freedom  for  human 
thought.  The  Pole  Kopernik  was  the  forerunner  of  Galileo,  the 
Tchekh  John  Huss  that  of  I^uther.  These  are  great  titles  to  glory 
for  the  Slavs, — so  great  that  they  are  contested  by  the  Germans. 
For,  as  ill  luck  would  have  it,  a  rival  race,  after  settling  down  in  the 
land  of  their  great  men,  managed  to  deny  them  even  their  names. 
If  we  take  into  consideration  the  secular  encroachments  of  Ger- 
many, and  the  fact  that  the  bulk  of  the  population  is  Slav  in 
Saxony  and  Eastern  Prussia,  the  Slavs,  very  likely,  would  have 
more  right  to  claim  as  theirs  many  of  the  great  names  of  which 
Germany  brags.  In  the  wake  of  Kopernik  and  Huss,  the  two 
Slav  peoples  most  closely  connected  with  the  West  through 
religion  and  vicinity,  Poland  and  Bohemia  {Tchekhid)  could 
read  oiGf  a  long  roll  of  men  distinguished  in  letters,  sciences, 
politics,  and  war.  And  among  the  Southern  Slavs  {Yugoslavs) 
a  small  republic  like  Ragusa  could,  alone,  furnish  an  entire 
gallery  of  men  gifted  in  all  lines.*  Where  remoteness  from  the 
West  and  foreign  oppression  made  study  impossible  and  prevented 
individual  proper  names  from  coming  up,  the  people  has  mani- 

■^  This  is  not,  after  all,  such  a  very  trifling  service — to  guard  the  door  of 
the  chamber  of  knowledge  and  with  one's  life  blood  secure  to  the  workers 
within  the  necessary  leisure  and  safety, — and  in  this  sense  at  least  it  is 
probable  that  European  civilization  could  not  have  dispensed  with  the 
assistance  of  the  Slavs. 

*  On  these  various  Slav  tribes,  The  Slavic  World  (Le  Monde  Slave) 
and  the  Slavic  Studies  (Etudes  Slaves)  by  Mr.  Louis  L^ger  may  be  profit- 
ably consulted.  Mr.  L^ger  has  done  most  of  all  Frenchmen  since  Cyprien 
Robert,  to  give  us  a  knowledge  of  peoples  who,  by  their  struggle  against 
Germanism,  are  of  particular  interest  to  France. 


lOO      THE  EMPIRE   OF   THE    TSARS  AND   THE  RUSSIANS. 

fested  its  genius  in  such  minstrelsy  as  has  nothing  to  envy  in  the 
finest  poetry  of  the  West.  In  that  kind  of  popular,  impersonal 
poetry  which  we  so  greatly  admire  in  the  romanceros  of  Spain,  the 
ballads  of  Scotland  or  the  songs  {chansons)  of  France,  the  Slav, 
far  from  yielding  the  prize  to  the  Latins  or  Teutons,  possibly 
surpasses  both.  There  is  nothing  more  truly  poetical  than  the 
piSsnte  ("lays ")  of  Serbia,  and  the  diimy  ("  reveries ")  of  Little- 
Russia  ;  for,  by  way  of  natural  compensation,  it  is  among  the 
Slavs  least  initiated  into  Western  culture  that  popular  poetry  has 
blossomed  out  most  freely.' 

What  will  these  new-comers  bring  to  West-European  culture  ? 
In  poetry,  in  the  novel,  they  already  have  struck  some  new  notes ; 
what  will  they  contribute  to  scientific  research,  philosophical 
conceptions,  religious  and  political  ?  This,  for  Western  civiliza- 
tion, is  a  momentous  question.  May  be  the  Slavs  have  come  in 
too  late  to  create  for  themselves  a  Pantheon  or  Walhalla  as 
gloriously  filled  as  those  of  the  Latins  and  Teutons.  May  be,  in 
literature  and  art  generally,  the  heroic  age,  the  age  of  the  sub- 
lime, has  passed  away  ;  may  be  even  in  science,  the  great  laws 
easily  accessible  to  the  human  mind  have  all  been  discovered, 
and  mankind  is  reduced,  for  a  long  period,  to  their  application  and 
to  inventions  of  details.  The  Slavs,  especially  the  Russians,  are 
endowed  with  ambition,  intellectual  no  less  than  material.  With 
the  recklessness  of  the  youth  who,  ere  he  has  learned  all  his 
masters  can  teach  him,  already  dreams  of  distancing  them  in  the 
race,  they  look  on  the  old  peoples  of  the  West  with  a  scorn  that 
should  be  forgiven  their  youthful  presumption.  They  flatter 
themselves  they  will  solve  the  problems  which  the  West  boot- 
lessly  agitates  ;  they  think  they  own  the  secret  of  the  social 
and  political  regeneration  of  Europe  and  the  Christian  world.* 

'  Is  not  this  a  sign  that  "  Western  culture  "  had  better  be  dispensed 
with,  or  rather — not  to  be  sweeping  and  misleading — that  it  should  not  be 
forced  in  its  entirety  on  a  race  which,  as  a  whole,  it  does  not  fit  and  whose 
individuality  it  smothers  whenever  it  is  given  its  own  way. 

*  Naturally,  the  future  being  theirs.     It  is  easy  to  see  that  the  predomi- 


RACES  AND  NATIONALITY.  lOI 

l*he  future  will  judge.  Meantime,  let  them  widen  and  renew 
morally  the  Western  civilization,  which  they  are  appropriating  and 
extending  territorially.  After  having  been  so  long  merely  the 
warders  of  its  frontier,  they  carry  it  forward.  From  being  the 
rear-guard  of  Europe,  they  have  become  her  vanguard  in  the 
conquest  of  Asia  and  the  East. 

By  temperament  and  character  the  Slavs  present  an  assort- 
ment of  defects  and  qualities  which  places  them  nearer  to  the 
I^atins  and  Celts  than  to  their  neighbors,  the  Germans.  In  the 
place  of  the  Teutonic  phlegm,  they  frequently  exhibit,  even  under 
the  northernmost  skies,  a  liveliness,  quickness,  warmth,  at  times 
a  mobility,  petulance,  exuberance,  not  to  be  found  in  the  same 
degree  even  among  southern  nations.*     In  the  political  life  of 

sating  bent  of  their  mind — especially  that  of  their  main  tribe,  the  Russians 
—lies  towards  the  practical,  the  positive,  that  they  will  make  the  field  of 
scientific  research  pre-eminently  their  own.  In  chemistry  and  medicine 
they  are  already  avowedly  in  the  van.  In  the  arts,  especially  in  music,  it  is 
no  longer  a  question  of  what  they  will  do.  But  in  philosophy  and  political 
science  they  undoubtedly  will  have,  in  good  time,  some  weighty  words  to 
say,  and  such  as  will  probably  astonish  their  older  sister  nations  not  a  little. 
That  they  have  no  part  or  share  in  the  great  Ivatino-Teutonic  civilization, 
•which  has  never  till  lately  had  anything  for  them  but  ignorant  contempt 
and  utter  lack  of  comprehension — is  most  true,  just  what  Mr.  Danilefsky 
so  ably  sets  forth.  (See  p.  13.)  Their  mission  will  be  to  correct  its  faults, 
to  fill  its  gaps,  to  rejuvenate  it  by  bringing  plain-speaking  and  genuineness 
to  bear  against  the  shams,  catchwords,  and  cant  phrases  which  are  the 
rotten  props  of  many  an  empty  shell, — the  stage  of  decadence  to  which 
every  great  civilization  in  the  world  has  arrived  after  a  long  and  glorious 
course,  when  the  exhaustion  of  age  puts  an  end  to  self-renewal  and  renewal 
has  to  come  from  outside.  This  renewal,  in  the  sequence  of  ages  and  the 
logic  of  history,  it  is  the  Slavs'  turn  to  bring,  and  when  the  Slavic  spirit 
stands  revealed  and  unfettered  before  the  world  in  its  solemn  simplicity,  its 
earnestness,  sincerity,  and  broad  tolerance,  such  glaring  fallacies  as  those 
of  the  "  Contrat  Social''  in  politics,  and  the  elucubrations  of  Voltaire  and 
the  Encyclopedists  on  religion  and  history,  left  to  stand  on  their  own  mer- 
its, will  fall  to  pieces  of  themselves,  and  their  practical  applications  with  all 
their  dire  train  of  consequences  of  course  become  impossible. 

*  There  is,  perhaps,  no  national  character  with  so  many  sides  to  it  as 
the  Slavic.  By  this — the  emotional  and  mercurial — side  it  is  nearly  akin  to 
the  Irish,  especially  the  Southern  or  Little-Russians,  with  their  love  of 
melody,  beauty,  and — idling.    There  is  an  intellectual  counterpart  to  this 


I02      THE  EMPIRE   OF   THE    TSARS  AND   THE  RUSSIANS. 

thase  Slavs  whose  blood  is  least  mixed,  this  natural  disposition 
has  produced  a  mercurial,  mutable,  anarchical  spirit,  a  spirit  of 
incoherence,  division,  separatism,  which  has  thrown  great  diflS- 
culties  in  the  way  of  their  national  existence,  and  which,  to- 
gether with  their  geographical  position,  has  been  the  main 
obstacle  to  the  progress  of  their  civilization.  The  distinctive 
quality  which  pervades  the  entire  race  independently  of  the 
various  crosses  of  its  several  peoples,  is  a  flexibility,  an  elasticity 
of  temperament  and  character,  of  the  organs  and  the  intellect, 
which  enable  it  to  receive  and  reproduce  any  and  all  ideas  or 
forms.  The  gift  of  imitativeness  characteristic  of  the  Slavs  has 
often  been  spoken  of.  This  gift  extends  to  everything,  to  words 
and  thoughts  alike  ;  it  belongs  to  all  ages,  and  both  sexes.  This 
peculiar  malleability,  the  property  of  both  Russian  and  Pole,  is  at 
bottom,  possibly,  only  a  result  of  the  race's  history,  and,  conse- 
quently, of  their  geographical  situation.  Being  the  latest  comers, 
and  for  a  long  while  inferior  to  the  neighboring  races,  they  have 
always  been  going  to  school  to  somebody  or  other.  Instead  of 
living  on  their  own  capital,  they  have  lived  on  loans,  until 
imitativeness  became  their  leading  faculty,  because  the  most  use- 
ful as  well  as  the  most  constantly  called  into  play. 

too.  Quick  to  seize,  tenacious  in  retaining,  and  exceedingly  prompt,  in 
common  parlance,  in  "putting  two  and  two  together,"  our  children  guess 
fully  as  much  as  they  learn,  and  do  not  take  kindly  to  the  slow  and  ponder- 
ously thorough  educational  methods  so  dear — and  necessary — to  the  Ger- 
mans. Thus  Kindergarten  instruction  has  to  be  considerably  modified  to 
please  and  therefore  benefit  them,  as  a  tot  of  five  resents  as  an  insult,  for 
instance,  to  be  gravely  shown  "at  school"  an  article  in  papifr  mdcAS  and 
be  told  to  learn  that  it  represents  the  familiar  rye-bread  which  he  lustily 
munches  in  natura  three  times  a  day  with  his  milk.  Our  youth  have  brains 
active  to  restlessness  and  vastly  prefer  to  exercise  them  by  "  making  things 
out "  themselves,  rather  than  learn  things  as  they  are  set  down  in  books, 
by  a  mere  effort  of  memory.  It  is  very  possible  that  this  trait  lies  at  the 
root  of  the  almost  universal  predilection  for  experimental  and  inductive 
science,  and  the  very  general  disfavor  into  which  historical  branches  have 
fallen.  This  peculiar  quickness  and  intellectual  bent,  with  its  advantages 
and  drawbacks,  we  have  in  common  with  the  Americans, — nor  is  it,  by  far, 
the  only  point  of  similarity  and,  therefore,  mutoal  sympathy  and  compre- 
hension, between  the  two  nations. 


RACES  AND  NA  TIONALJTY.  IO3 

This  in  no  wise  means  that  the  Slavs  differ  too  little  from  the 
others  to  form  distinct  nationalities,  each  having  its  own  separate 
language,  literature,  traditions,  a  character  or  genius  proper  to 
each.  Far  from  it.  History,  geography,  religion,  the  rule  or 
contact  of  aliens,  have  separated  them  but  too  well,  making  a 
complete  fusion  impossible  ;  impossible,  also,  for  consanguinity  of 
race  and  language  to  effect  forgetfulness  of  their  different  nation- 
alities. Panslavism  would  prove  as  impracticable  as  Panlatin- 
ism.  At  bottom  it  really  is  nothing  but  a  scarecrow  invented  by 
the  Germans  to  arouse  the  mistrust  of  the  West  against  the  small 
nationalities  engaged  in  a  life-struggle  against  Germanism.  The 
"  Slavic  rivulets  "  have  no  inclination  whatever  to  lose  themselves 
in  ' '  the  Russian  ocean. ' '  Catholic  or  Orthodox,  neither  Tchekh 
nor  Croat,  neither  Serb  nor  Bulgar  ever  envied  the  fate  of  the  Poles 
on  the  Visla.  What  these  little  ' '  younger  brothers ' '  expect 
from  Russia  is  not  absorption  into  the  domain  of  the  Tsar,  but 
the  shielding  of  their  independence.  That  is  known  in  St. 
Petersburgh.  It  is  also  known  that  the  empire  incloses  within 
its  boundaries  peoples  and  nationalities  enough  as  it  is, — 
enough  not  to  want  to  increase  their  numbers  any  more.  Even 
in  Moscow,  the  dreamers  of  Panslavism,  with  the  exception 
of  a  very  few  utopists,  do  not  let  their  dreams  carry  them 
farther  than  a  sort  of  ' '  patronate  "  to  be  extended  to  the  south- 
em  Slavs,  a  sort  of  Slavic  hegemony  ;  and  even  this  suzerainty 
may  encounter  opposition  from  the  most  devoted  of  the  kindred 
peoples. 

As  far  back  as  we  can  trace  the  past,  we  find  the  Slavs 
divided  into  two  principal  groups,  which  historical  influences  were 
to  impel  to  fatal  antagonism.  In  the  east,  towards  the  Dniepr, 
were  the  eastern  Slavs,  from  whom,  along  with  the  Russians,  the 
southern  Slavs  appear  to  have  sprung  :  Bulgars,  Serbs,  Croats, 
Slovens.'     In  the  west,  on  the  Visla  and  the  Elb,  are  the  west- 

*  The  Bulgars  were  originally  a  Turanian  tribe  that  lived  on  the  Volga, 
towards  its  lower  course,  and  it  is  very  likely  that  the  river  Ra  took  its 


104      "^^^  EMPIRE  OF  THE    TSARS  AND   THE  RUSSIANS. 

em  Slavs  :  the  Liakhs,  Poles,  Tchekhs,  Slovacks,  with  others, 
since  destroyed  or  absorbed  by  the  Germans  ;  a  survival  of  these 
still  confronts  us  in  the  Vends  of  Saxon  and  Prussian  Lausitz. 
The  geographical  situation  of  each  of  these  tribes  determined 
their  history  and  made  enemies  out  of  the  two  chief  ones.  In 
the  west  the  western  Slavs  were  met  by  the  influence  of  Rome ; 
in  the  east  the  eastern  Slavs  encountered  that  of  Byzance  ;  hence 
the  antagonism  which,  for  centuries,  has  kept  the  two  greatest 
Slavic  nations  in  strife  with  each  other.  The  bond  of  a  common 
origin  and  affinity  of  language  was  severed  by  that  which  most 
binds  men — religion,  writing,  calendar, — ^by  the  very  elements  of 
civilization.  Hence,  between  Russian  and  Pole,  a  firmly  rooted 
hostility,  moral  as  well  as  material, — a  struggle  which,  after  all 
but  annihilating  the  one,  cost  the  other  its  life,  as  though,  from 
the  Karpathians  to  the  Ural,  on  that  immense,  smooth  and  even 
area,  there  were  no  room  for  two  distinct  states. 

Between  these  two  main  branches  of  Slavs,  south  of  the  Baltic 
Finns,  there  appears  in  the  northwest,  on  the  Ni^men  and  the 
Dvina,  a  strange  group,  of  incontestably  Indo-European  origin, 
yet  quite  isolated  amidst  the  peoples  of  Europe,  linked  on  to  the 
Slavs,  yet  forming  rather  a  parallel  branch  than  a  twig  of  the 
Slavic  branch  : — this  group  is  the  I/Ctto-Iyithuanian. 

Relegated  in  the  north,  shut  in  by  marshy  forests,  pressed 
upon  closely  by  powerful  neighbors,  the  I^ithuanian  g^oup  was 
closed  to  any  outer  influences,  be  it  from  the  East  or  West.  Of 
all  the  peoples  of  Europe,  this  was  the  last  to  accept  Christianity, 

modem  name  from  them.  They  became  considerably  aryanized  in  the 
course  of  time,  and  migrated  southwards,  and  turned  up  in  the  Balkan 
Peninsula — in  Ancient  Thracia — as  a  Slavic  tribe.  But  after  the  Turkish 
conquest,  contact  with  their  Turanian  masters  restored  them  in  a  great 
measure  to  their  original  race-affinities,  and  now  the  most  cursory  glance 
at  a  group  of  Bulgarian  peasants  shows  that  they  have  far  more  Turkish 
than  Slavic  blood.  Heavy  and  stolid  in  looks  and  mind,  they  are  strikingly 
unlike  the  other  members  of  the  family,  of  which,  however,  they  are 
admitted  to  be  a  branch.  And  the  race  bond  alone  would  hardly  be  very 
■trong  but  for  their  common  Orthodox  Christianity. 


RACES  AND  NATIONALITY.  I05 

and  to  this  day  its  languages  are,  of  all  European  tongues,  the 
nearest  to  Sanskrit.  No  human  family  had  so  few  migrations  ; 
none  ever  occupied  so  compact  a  territory,  and  none  ever  was  so 
cut  and  slashed  into  bits  by  conquests  and  by  religions.  Wedged 
tight  between  more  races  stronger  in  numbers  which  gradually 
drove  them  back,  the  Letto-I^ithuanians,  at  the  present  time,  are 
reduced  to  scarcely  three  million  souls,  speaking  three  languages  : 
Lithuanian,  Samogit,  and  l^ett.  They  are  divided  between  two 
states,  Russia  and  Germany,  not  to  mention  the  whilom  kingdom 
of  Poland,  of  which  they  occupy  the  northeast.  Wrangled  over 
by  three  nations — the  Germans,  the  Poles,  the  Russians, — who 
by  turns  obtained  a  footing  in  their  country,  they  accepted  the 
religions  of  all  three,  some  becoming  Protestants,  some  Catholics, 
and  some  Orthodox.  Their  two  principal  groups,  the  Letts  and 
Lithuanians,  have  gone  through  experiences  suflSciently  opposed 
to  answer  to  all  these  contrasts. 

The  Lithuanian  element,  as  the  strongest  in  numbers,  has  for  a 
long  time  played  a  considerable  part  between  Russia  and  Poland  ; 
indeed  at  one  time,  under  the  Yagellons,  it  was  on  the  point  of 
seizing  on  the  leadership  of  the  entire  Slavic  world.  After  four 
centuries  of  union  with  Poland,  never,  however,  culminating  in 
fusion, — after  being  aggrandized  at  the  expense  of  old .  Russian 
principalities,  the  country  that  had  its  name  from  the  Lithuanians 
was  annexed  to  Russia  at  the  time  of  the  dismemberment  of 
Poland,  and  became,  between  these  two  countries,  the  permanent 
object  of  an  historical  contest  which  was  the  chief  obstacle  to  a 
reconciliation.  Mixed  with  the  Poles  and  Russians,  who  both 
threaten  them  with  absorption,  the  Lithuanians  and  the  Samogits, 
their  brethren  by  race  and  language,  still  number  in  old  Lithu- 
ania nigh  on  two  million  souls,  mostly  Catholics  ;  they  constitute 
a  majority  of  the  population  in  the  Governments  of  Vilna  and 
Kovno.  Hard  by,  in  Prussia,  a  group  of  200,000  Lithuanians 
still  subsists.  They  are  the  representatives  of  the  ancient  popu- 
lation of  Kast  Prussia, — a  country  that  has  its  name  from  a  peo- 


I06      THE   EMPIRE   OF   THE    TSAKS  AND   THE  RUSSIANS, 

pie  of  the  same  race  (Bo-russians,  Po-russians),'  and  preserved  its 
language  up  to  the  seventeenth  centur>-.  The  second  now  living 
group  of  this  family,  the  Letts,  possibly  crossed  with  Finns, 
amounts  to  quite  a  million  souls.  They  form  the  majority  in 
Curland,  and  the  southern  half  of  Livonia.  They  were  subju- 
gated, made  serfs  of,  and  converted  by  the  German  Knights- 
Sword-bearers,  and  became  Protestants  along  with  their  German 
lords.  Like  the  Finn  tribes  who  dwell  out  of  Finland,  the  Letts 
and  Lithuanians,  from  their  scant  numbers  and  division  into  small 
fragments,  are  incapable,  by  themselves,  of  forming  a  nation,  a 
state. 

It  is  from  the  upper  course  of  the  Dniepr  and  the  Dvina,  near 
the  watershed  which  divides  the  waters  between  the  Baltic,  the 
Caspian,  and  the  Black  Seas,  that  those  Slavs  went  forth  who  were 
to  become  the  cement  of  the  great  race  fated  to  rule  within  the 
area  bordered  by  the  three  seas.  Slowly  they  advanced  along  the 
rivers  from  west  to  east,  radiating  northward  and  southward ; 
they  pushed  on  into  the  very  hearts  of  forests,  driving  before 
them  the  Finn  tribes,  or  cutting  them  asunder  into  isolated  patches 
to  be  absorbed  at  leisure  by  and  by.  Out  of  the  mingling  of  the 
two  races,  the  ruder  one  being  assimilated  by  the  more  cultivated 
one,  imder  the  twofold  action  of  a  common  religion  and  common 
surroimdings,  tending  to  lead  both  to  unity,  sprang  new  people, 
an  homogeneous  nation.  For,  contrary  to  certain  prejudices, 
there  are  in  Russia  not  merely  races  more  or  less  amalgamated, — 
there  is  a  nation,  or  what,  in  our  days,  goes  by  the  designation 
of  "  a  nationality,"  as  compact,  as  imited,  as  self-conscious  as 
any  in  the  world.  With  all  her  various  races,  her  '*  allogens  "  or 
aliens,  Russia  is  by  no  means  an  incoherent  mass,  a  sort  of 
political  conglomerate  or  patchwork  of  peoples.  It  is  not  Turkey 
or  Austria,  it  is  rather  France  she  resembles  as  regards  national 
tinity.     If  Russia  is  to  be  compared  to  a  mosaic,  it  should  be  to 

'  Bo-russi,  probably  a  corruption  of  Po-russi,  which  would  mean  "(the 
f^opXt)  alongside  of  the  Russians,"  i.  e.  their  nearest  neighbors. 


RACES  AND  NATIONALITY.  107 

one  of  those  antique  pavements  the  ground  of  which  is  made  out 
of  a  single  substance  and  a  single  color,  the  border  alone  showing 
different  pieces  and  colours.  Most  of  these  populations  of  alien 
origin  are  relegated  to  the  extremities,  and  form  around  Russia, 
especially  towards  the  east  and  west,  a  sort  of  belt,  of  uneven 
width  and  density.  The  centre  is  entirely  filled  with  a  nationality 
endowed  with  the  twofold  property  of  absorbing  and  expanding, 
in  the  midst  of  which  vanish  a  few  meagre  German  colonies 
or  insignificant  Finn  or  Tatar  patches,  devoid  of  cohesion  or 
national  bond. 

In  the  interior  of  this  Russia,  instead  of  dissimilarities  and 
contrasts,  what  strikes  the  traveller,  is  the  uniformity  of  the 
population  and  the  monotony  of  their  lives.  This  uniformity, 
which  civilization  tends  to  spread  everywhere,  is  found  in  Russia 
in  a  higher  degree  than  in  any  people  of  Europe.  I^anguage, 
from  end  to  end  of  the  empire,  has  fewer  dialects  and  patois, 
fewer  fluctuations  and  gradings  off  of  shadings,  than  most  West- 
em  languages  have  on  a  far  smaller  area.  The  cities  are  all  alike  ; 
so  are  the  peasants,  in  looks,  in  habits,  in  mode  of  life.  In  no 
country  do  people  resemble  one  another  more  ;  no  other  country 
is  so  free  from  that  provincial  complexity,  those  oppositions  in 
type  and  character,  which  even  yet  we  encounter  in  Italy  and 
Spain,  in  France  and  Germany.  The  nation  is  made  in  the  like- 
ness of  the  country  :  it  shows  the  same  unity,  we  might  say  the 
same  monotony,  as  the  plains  on  which  it  dwells. 

Yet  there  are  in  the  nation,  as  in  the  soil,  two  principal  types, 
almost  two  peoples,  speaking  two  dialects,  different  and  most 
clearly  separate  even  in  their  mutual  resemblance  :  they  are  the 
' '  Great-Russians ' '  and  the  ' '  I^ittle-Russians. ' '  By  their  qualities 
as  by  their  defects  they  represent,  in  Russia,  the  everlasting  con- 
trast of  North  and  South.  History  has  done  no  less  than  nature 
in  this  direction.  The  Great-Russians  have  their  principal  centre 
in  Moscow,  the  I^ittle-Russians  in  Kief.  Stretching  away,  the 
one  to  the  northeast,  the  other  to  the  southwest,  these  two  uneven 


108       THE  EMPIRE  OF   THE    TSARS  AND   THE  RUSSIANS. 

halves  of  the  Russian  nation  do  not  exactly  correspond  to  the 
great  physical  zones  of  Russia.  The  fault  lies  partly  with  nature 
herself,  partly  with  history,  which  hampered  the  development  of 
the  one  and  favored  that  of  the  other.  The  steppes  of  the  south, 
open  ever  to  invasion,  have  for  a  long  time  hindered  the  expansion 
of  the  Little-Russian,  or  Maloross,  who  was,  through  centuries, 
kept  shut  up  in  the  basins  of  the  Dniepr,  the  Bug,  and  the  Dniestr; 
while  the  Great-Russian,  or  Velikoruss,  freely  spreading  to  the 
north  and  east,  went  on  settling  in  the  immense  basin  of  the 
Volga,  and,  after  taking  possession  of  nearly  the  whole  of  the 
forest  land,  from  west  to  east,  from  the  great  lakes  to  the  Ural, 
slowly  turned  southward,  to  the  Black- Mould  belt  and  the  steppes, 
along  the  Volga  and  the  Don. 

Between  these  two  principal  elements  there  is  a  third,  less  im- 
portant one,  to  which  history,  as  well  as  nature,  has  left  a  more 
thankless  part  to  play.  It  is  the  Bieloruss  or  White-Russian, 
who  dwells  in  the  governments  of  Mohilef,  Vitebsk,  Grodno, 
Minsk,  a  region  owning  some  of  the  finest  forests  in  Russia,  but 
the  soil  of  which,  all  cut  up  by  marshes,  is  meagre  and  unwhole- 
some. More  nearly  connected  with  the  Great-Russian  by  his 
dialect,  the  Bieloruss  has  been  brought  nearer  to  the  Little- 
Russian  by  the  vicissitudes  of  politics.  The  two  tribes  have  often 
been  classed  together  under  the  name  of  Western-Russians. 
Early  subjected  to  the  rule  of  Lithuania,  whose  dialect  became 
her  official  language,  White-Russia,  like  the  greater  part  of  Little- 
Russia,  was  joined  to  Poland,  and  remained,  through  centuries, 
the  stakes  for  which  the  Polish  Commonwealth  and  the  Moscovite 
Tsars  played  a  game  from  the  eflFects  of  which  she  still  bleeds. 
Of  the  three  Russian  tribes,  this  is  certainly  the  one  whose  blood 
is  purest ;  nevertheless  it  has  always  been  the  poorest  and  least 
advanced  in  civilization. 

The  White-Russians  number  about  four  million  souls,  the 
Little-Russians  seventeen  to  eighteen,  the  Great-Russians  forty- 
seven  to  forty-eight  miUions,  which  means  that  these  alone,  by 


RACES  AND  NATIONALITY.  I09 

themselves,  amount  to  about  half  the  entire  population  of  the 
European  portion  of  the  empire. 

The  Great-Russians  constitute  the  most  vigorous  and  expan- 
sive element  of  the  Russian  nation  ;  but  it  is  the  most  mixed. 
The  Finnic  blood  shows  most  in  their  features,  the  Tatar  rule  in 
their  character.  Before  the  Romdnofs  were  raised  to  the  throne, 
this  element,  all  alone,  formed  the  empire  of  the  Moscovite  Tsars ; 
also,  they  assumed  the  title  of  sovereigns  "of  all  the  Russias" 
long  before  Alexis,  the  father  of  Peter  the  Great,  began,  by- 
annexing  Ukraina,  to  have  some  claim  to  the  title.  Hence  the 
Great-Russian  has,  under  the  name  of  Moscovite,  been  held 
by  sundry  foreigners  to  be  the  true,  the  only  Russian.  The 
name  is  a  misnomer.  The  Great-Russian,  the  product  of 
the  colonization  of  Central  Russia  by  the  Western  -  Russians 
prior  to  the  Tatar  invasion,  is  anterior  to  the  state  and 
even  the  city  of  Moscow.  If  out  of  it  did  emerge  the  Mos- 
covite autocracy,  still  it  is  impossible  to  sever  the  bonds  which 
unite  to  it  the  great  Slavic  Commonwealth  of  the  West,  the 
name  of  which  has  remained  a  symbol  of  activity  and  Hberty, 
Nbvgorod  the  Great. 

The  least  Slavic  of  all  the  peoples  who  claim  the  name,  the 
Great- Russian  *  has  been  the  great  colonizer  of  the  Slavic  race.  His 
enemies  call  him  Turanian,  Mongol,  Asiatic ;  but,  in  point  of  fact, 
he,  like  the  other  Russians,  had  his  starting-point  in  the  West, — 
i.  e.  in  I^ittle-Russia,  White-Russia,  and  N6vgorod.  He  marched 
from  Europe  towards  Asia.  It  is  from  the  banks  of  the  Dvina 
and  the  Dniepr  that  he  started  on  that  gigantic  Odyssey  which 
was,  in  the  course  of  five  or  six  centuries,  to  take  him  beyond  the 
Ural,  beyond  the  Caspian  and  the  Caucasus.     We  have  a  good 

» Yet  the  peasantry  of  the  central  governments,  bom  tradesmen  and 
industrials,  are  considered  to  present  an  Indo-European  type  of  a  hand- 
some and  noble  order,  with  eyes  blue,  gray,  or  hazel,  hair  dark  blond  or 
light  chestnut,  and  beard  always  a  shade  or  two  lighter,  and  uncommonly 
white  skins.  The  children  are  absolutely  rosy  wherever  their  bodies  are 
exposed  to  the  air. 


no      THE  EMPIRE  OF  THE   TSARS  AND   THE  RUSSIANS. 

presentment  of  the  Great-Russian's  destiny  and  route  in  the  river 
whose  downward  course  he  followed,  from  source  to  mouth.  The 
Volga  has  traced  out  his  itinerary  for  him ;  like  the  Volga,  he 
flowed  from  Europe  to  Asia.  When  with  Ivan  III.  and  Ivan  IV., 
and,  later,  with  Peter  the  Great,  he  turned  his  face  aggressively 
towards  the  Baltic  and  the  West,  he  merely  went  back  to  his 
source,  seeking  for  his  European  basis  of  yore. '  His  entire  history 
has  been  one  long  struggle  against  Asia  ;  his  conquests  en- 
larged Europe,  every  one.  Though  so  long  the  vassal  of  the 
Tatar  khans,  the  Asiatic  sway  never  made  him  forgetful  of 
his  European  origin,  and  in  the  farthest  comer  of  Moscovia  the 
very  name  "Asiatic,"  "Asiat,"  is  even  still  an  insult  in  the 
ear  of  the  peasant. 

Having  won  the  victory  over  Asia,  the  Great-Russian 
could  not  traverse  the  space  of  six  centuries,  nor  the  distance 
fr-om  the  Dniepr  to  the  Ural  without  adopting  by  the  way 
more  than  one  trait,  both  moral  and  physical,  of  the  popu- 
lations assimilated  or  subjugated  by  him.  These  influences 
have  left  him  a  something  harsher,  but  also  more  robust,  than 
the  gifts  the  other  Slavs  are  endowed  with.  He  has  less 
spirit  of  independence,  less  pride,  less  individuality  ;  but  these 
qualities  are  made  up  to  him  by  greater  patience,  unity  of  views, 
consistency.  According  to  a  remark  made  by  Herzen,  the  Great- 
Russian,  if,  in  getting  crossed  with  more  ponderous  races,  he 
has  lost  some  of  the  lightness  peculiar  to  pure  Slavic  blood, 
has  also  lost  some  of  the  mercurial  mobility  which  has  become 
fatal  to  other  Slavic  tribes.  The  extreme  Slavic  ductility  has 
been  corrected  by  foreign  alloy.  In  its  fusion  with  the  Tatar 
copper  or  the  Finnic  lead,  the  Russian  metal  has  gained  more  in 

*  It  should  be  remembered  that  Ndvgorod  was  a  member  of  the  Hansa, 
and  that  Anne,  a  daughter  of  Yaroslav  the  Great  and  granddaughter  of 
Vladimir  of  Kief,  of  Christian  and  epic  memory,  was  wife  of  Henri  I.  King 
of  France,  one  of  the  first  Capetians.  These  two  facts  imply  a  good  deal 
of  mutual  knowledge  and  congeniality,  as  well  as  pretty  regular  and 
frequent  intercourse. 


RACES  AND  NATIONALITY.  Ill 

solidity  than  it  has  lost  in  purity.  It  is  perhaps  owing  to  this 
cross  that  the  Great-Russian  has  distanced  all  his  rivals  and 
become  the  nucleus  of  the  greatest  empire  in  the  world.  The 
triumph  of  such  mixed  blood  in  certain  tribes  over  competitors 
more  free  from  mis-alliances,  far  from  being  an  anomaly,  is  on  the 
contrary  a  phenomenon  frequently  recurring  in  history.  These 
peoples,  sprung  from  various  races,  make  up  in  vigor  for  what 
they  lack  in  delicacy.  Thus  Prussia  in  Germany,  Piedmont  in 
Italy,  have  given  to  the  two  countries  the  unity  they  could  not 
derive  from  less  mixed  national  elements  and,  in  ancient  times, 
Macedon  and  Rome  herself  have  yielded  analogous  examples. 

For  being  crossed  with  Finn  or  Tatar  blood,  the  Great- 
Russians  have  not  themselves  become  either  Finns  or  Tatars  ;  for 
not  being  of  pure  Indo-European  race,  they  are  not  Turanians. 
I^anguage  and  bringing  up  do  not  constitute  their  only  claim  to 
the  name  of  Slavs.  The  Russian  of  Great- Russia  is  not  a  Slav 
merel}'-  in  the  way  that  the  French  and  Spaniards  are  lyatins — by 
traditions  and  civilization,  by  adoption  so  to  speak  ;  he  is  Slav  by 
direct  filiation.  A  notable  portion  of  the  blood  in  his  veins  is 
Slavic.  The  proportion  is  difl&cult,  or  rather  impossible,  to  specify  ; 
it  varies  according  to  the  regions,  to  the  classes,  which  have  long 
ago  formed  themselves  into  more  or  less  closed  castes.  It  is 
larger  in  the  regions  more  anciently  colonized,  such  as  the  banks 
of  rivers  along  which  the  Slavs  formerly  advanced.  At  times, 
when  journeying  from  the  banks  of  rivers  into  the  interior,  we 
pass  from  a  type  almost  entirely  Slavic  to  one  almost  entirely 
Finnic  until  we  come  to  barely  russified  Finns  who,  while  losing 
their  language,  have  preserved  their  garb  and  customs.  The  por- 
tion of  Slavic  blood  in  the  mass  of  the  nation  is  nevertheless  very 
considerable,  if  not  predominant.  The  same  arguments  which 
demonstrate  a  Finnic  alloy  in  the  Great-Russian  also  show  us 
that  he  is  Slav  at  bottom. 

Great- Russia  was  not  subdued  by  the  Slavs  of  Novgorod  and 
Kief  in  a  few  brief  military  expeditions.     It  was  not  a  conquest, 


112      THE  EMPIRE  OF  THE   TSARS  AND   THE  RUSSIANS. 

a  mere  armed  occupation,  with  no  more  important  revulsion  than 
a  change  of  dynasty  or  landlords ;  it  was  a  long,  slow  immigra- 
tion, a  sort  of  scarcely  perceptible  infiltration  of  the  Slavic  ele- 
ment, that  went  on  for  centuries,  almost  escaping  the  notice  of 
contemporary  annalists,  and  only  guessed  at  by  history,  and  that 
not  with  sufl&cient  precision  to  mark  off  the  stages.  There  is 
nothing  to  compare  with  this  in  the  West.  The  colonization  of 
Great-Russia  by  the  western  Russians  must  have  been  some- 
thing very  like  what  is  going  on  even  now  in  the  half-desert 
provinces  of  the  east  and  south.  We  cannot  picture  to  ourselves 
the  forests  of  the  north,  in  the  Finnic  period,  being  as  densely 
peopled  as  those  of  Gaul  or  even  Germany,  before  the  Roman 
wars.  The  climate,  soil,  mode  of  life  of  these  frequently  still 
half-nomadic  populations  are  opposed  to  such  an  idea.  The  littie 
resistance  met  by  the  Russian  invasion  also  bears  witness  to  the 
small  numbers  of  the  natives.  It  is  the  same  with  the  physical 
and  moral  differences  which  we  can  note  among  the  few  Finns 
still  scattered  on  Russian  soil.  So  great  a  diversity  among  mani- 
festiy  kindred  tribes  must  have  been  anterior  to  the  Slavic  coloni- 
zation and  proves  the  dispersion  and  extreme  parcelling  of  the 
native  tribes.  It  was  easy  for  the  Slavs  to  settle  in  the  midst  of 
these  scattered  tribes,  more  than  one  of  which  probably  owed 
them  its  concentration  into  a  comparatively  compact  group.  Pos- 
sibly even,  the  russification  of  the  Finns  did  not  proceed  on  a  large 
scale  until  these  tribes,  packed  close  by  pressure  from  the  new 
arrivals,  were  closely  encompassed  on  all  sides  by  them. 

It  should  not  be  forgotten,  moreover,  that  mingling  of  blood 
is  not  the  only  way  in  which  two  hostile  races  react  upon  one 
another.  Their  mere  coming  into  contact  on  the  same  soil,  even 
without  armed  strife,  is  frequentiy  sufficient  to  cause  the  decrease 
of  one  to  the  advantage  of  the  other.  This  phenomenon  so  strik- 
ingly illustrated  in  our  time  in  America  and  Australia  by  what  fol- 
lowed on  the  coming  of  the  Europeans,  appears  to  have  taken  place 
in  Europe  itself,  in  prehistoric  times,  when  the  primeval  popula- 


RACES  AND  NATIONALITY.  II3 

tions  began  to  vanish  before  the  Indo-European  race.  Is  it  not 
probable  that  in  Russia  the  Slavic,  /.  e.  the  Indo-European  blood, 
may  have  had  the  same  advantage  over  Turanian  blood  that  it  had 
in  the  other  parts  of  Europe  ?  Although  we  have,  unforttmately,  no 
statistical  data  on  the  subject,  some  observers  assert  that,  at  this 
very  day,  the  Finn  population  tends  to  diminish  in  numbers 
wherever  it  is  placed  in  direct  contact  with  a  Russian  population, 
and  that  too,  independently  of  intermarriages,  very  rare  between 
Finns  and  Russians,  independently  of  all  mixture,  from  the  mere 
fact  of  vicinity.  Could  not  the  mysterious  laws  of  the  ' '  struggU 
for  life  ' '  have  acted  in  a  more  perceptible  manner  when,  instead 
of  Russians  already  crossed  with  them,  the  Finns  found  them- 
selves face  to  face  with  Slavs  of  purer  blood  ? 

Tradition  equally  bears  out  the  Great-Russian's  claim  to  the 
name  of  Slav.  Indeed,  language  is  not  the  only  link  that  con- 
nects him  with  the  Slav  family,  and,  through  that,  with  the  other 
nations  of  Europe  ;  the  chief  link  consists  in  his  folk-lore  ;  popu- 
lar stories  and  songs,  chips  of  mythology  and  still  living  beliefs 
and  superstitions, — all  documents  that  cannot  be  ignored  when  the 
genealogy  of  a  people  is  inquired  into.  A  noticeable  fact  is  that 
it  is  in  the  north,  in  regions  incontestably  Finnic,  on  the  shores  of 
Lake  Onega  for  instance,  that  modem  scholars  have  collected  the 
largest  numbers  of  tales  and  ballads  in  prose  or  verse — skazkas  and 
bylinas,^" — although  the  farther  the  Russian  Slav  penetrated  into 
the  northern  forests,  the  more  careful  he  was  to  take  along  with 
him  his  family  titles.* 

JO  The>' in  this  word,  as  in  Aa/wj»/fe(Kalmuk) is  an  attempt  to  approximate 
an  untranscribable  Slavic  sound  -which  comes  nearest  to  we  ;  so  that  bylina, 
Kalmyk,  would  read  something  like  bwelina,  Kalmweek,  with  the  w  much 
weakened.  Bylina  literally  means  "something  that  has  been,"  while 
skhzka,  from  skas&ti,  "to  tell,"  answers  exactly  to  "tale"  or  the  I^atin 
equivalent,  "legend." 

*  On  this  subject,  which  has  given  rise  to  so  many  controversies,  see, 
apart  from  Russian  writers :  Mr.  Ralston,  Russian  Folk  Tales,  and  Songs 
of  ihe  Russian  People ;  M.  A.  Rambaud,  La  Russie  Jkpique ;  and  M.  A. 
De  Gubematis,  in  his  Zoological  Mythology. 


I  14       THE  EMPIRE   OF   THE    TSARS  AND   THE  RUSSIANS. 

The  upshot  of  all  this  is  that,  on  the  plains  of  the  Upper 
Volga  and  the  Ok^,  heterogeneous,  scattered,  and  loosely  consti- 
tuted tribes  somehow  congregated,  and,  out  of  all  these  bits  and 
patches,  a  compact  whole  was  formed,  the  various  elements  of 
which,  associated  before  fusion,  are  still  recognizable ;  just  as  in 
granite,  quartz,  feldspath,  and  mica,  mixed  without  being  assimi- 
lated, together  form  one  of  the  hardest  substances  in  existence. 
Thus  it  is  that  in  the  Russian  people,  especially  the  Great- Rus- 
sian, various  national  elements  often  are  discernible  to  the  eye  : 
they  are  as  yet  in  the  aggregate  stage  ;  the  physiological  fusion, 
begun  centuries  ago,  is  not  completed  yet ;  the  moral  and  political 
fusion,  the  only  one  that  matters  to  a  nation's  constitution,  has 
been  beforehand  with  it.  In  certain  senses  the  national  type  is 
still  being  elaborated  and  in  what  may  be  called  the  ' '  sketchy 
stage"  ;  but  the  same  cannot  be  said  of  the  Russian  nationality, 
even  if  at  times  it  seems  less  finished  than  that  of  one  or  other 
Western  people  :  there  would  be  no  gain  for  it  in  the  obliteration 
of  traces  of  an  origin  which  the  people  do  not  perceive  and  the 
causes  of  which  are  to  them  unknown  or  matter  of  indiflference. 
In  their  greatest  divergence,  the  populations  of  Russia  do  not 
show  oppositions  in  types  and  colors  so  violent  as  not  to  yield 
even  to  centuries  of  race  mixing, — such  oppositions  as  entail  on 
the  American  States  strife  and  race  rivalries  capable  of  endanger- 
ing their  liberty  and  safety.  In  all  that  concerns  ethnological 
unity  as  well  as  the  physical  unity  of  soil  and  clime,  Russia  has 
the  advantage  of  the  United  States  and  still  more  of  Brazil. 

In  spite  of  the  traces  of  crosses  which  he  often  bears  on  his 
face,  the  Great- Russian  maintains  imbroken  his  community  with 
the  Caucasian  race,  by  the  external  signs  which  most  clearly 
characterize  it :  stature,  color  of  skin,  hair  and  eyes.  His  stature 
is  more  often  high  than  low,  his  skin  is  white,  his  eyes  are  fre- 
quently blue  ;  his  hair  is  mostly  blond,  light  chestnut  or  auburn, — 
all  shades  which  almost  exclusively  belong  to  the  Caucasian  or 
Mediterranean  stock.  The  long,  thick  beard  which  is  the  pride  of 


RACES  AND  NATIONALITY.  Hj 

the  peasant's  heart,  and  which  all  the  persecutions  of  Peter  the 
Great  could  not  induce  him  to  cut  ofF,"  is  in  itself  a  sign  of  race, 
as  nothing  can  be  barer  than  the  chin  of  a  Mongol  or  a  Chinese.* 

Thus  then,  with  regard  to  race  as  well  as  soil,  Russia,  if  she 
does  differ  from  the  West,  differs  still  more  from  old  Asia  ;  from 
both  points  of  view,  she  embodies  the  conquest  of  the  latter  by 
the  former.  The  Russian  people,  both  by  blood  and  tradition,  is 
directly  linked  to  the  noblest,  most  progressive,  most  intellectual 
family  in  the  world,  but  to  the  branch  thereof  the  least  illustrious 
so  far.  Of  the  two  chief  ethnical  elements  that  enter  into  the 
making  of  Russia,  the  most  European — the  Slavic  element — is,  as 
regards  its  genius,  nearly  as  unknown  to  the  West  as  the  other  ; 
what  surprises  the  singular  people  issued  from  their  fusion  re- 
serves to  the  future,  cannot  even  be  conjectured. 

The  lyittle-Russians  (Maloross)  are  Russia's  Southerners. 
It  is  calculated  that  two  thirds  of  them  have  brown  or  dark- 
chestnut  hair.  Of  purer  race  than  their  brethren  of  Great-Russia, 
located  nearer  to  the  West,  they  glory  in  their  comparatively 
unmixed  blood,  their  milder  climate,  their  cheerier  land.  They 
are  handsomer  of  countenance  and  taller  in  stature,  have  finer 
limbs  and  are  of  slighter  make ;  they  are  livelier  and  more  alert 
in  mind,  but  at  the  same  time  more  changeable  ahd  more  indo- 
lent, more  meditative  and  less  determined,  consequently  more 
apathetic  and  less  enterprising.  Their  climate  having  been  less 
of  a  trial  to  them,  and  Oriental  despotism  having  sat  lighter  on 
them,  the  Little- Russian  and  White-Russian  have  more  personal 

"  Peter  never  meddled  with  the  peasants  in  any  way.  His  high-handed 
reforms  in  dress  and  mode  of  life  did  not  go  beyond  the  nobility  and  the 
urban  classes.  If  he  could  have  taken  in  hand  all  classes  equally,  there 
might  not  be  now  such  a  chasm  between  "the  million"  and  the  social 
"upper  ten  thousand." 

*  If  these  traits,  unfamiliar  to  the  races  of  Upper  Asia,  are  more  or  less 
frequently  encountered  in  certain  Finn  or  Tatar  tribes,  that  presupposes 
alliances,  in  remote  antiquity,  between  these  and  peoples  of  Caucasian 
stock,  and  this  very  fact  bringjs  the  Russians  into  closer  relationship  with 
the  Western  Europeans. 


1 1 6      THE  EMPIRE  OF   THE    TSARS  AND   THE  RUSSIANS. 

dignity,  more  independence,  more  individuality  than  the  Great- 
Russian  ;  their  mind  is  less  positive,  more  open  to  sentiment  and 
fancy,  more  dreamy  and  more  poetical.*  All  these  shades  of 
character  are  reproduced  in  the  melodies  and  songs  of  both  groups, 
in  their  holidays  and  customs,  although  provincial  diversities  are 
gradually  dying  out  under  the  influence  of  the  Great-Russian 
branch,  which  bids  fair  to  assimilate  the  western  Russians  as  the 
other  populations  of  the  empire.  The  contrast  is  still  visible  in 
family  and  commune,  in  the  house  and  the  villages  of  both  tribes. 
Amidst  the  Little- Russians  the  individual  is  more  independent, 
woman  is  freer,"  the  family  is  less  compactly  agglomerated  ;  the 
cottages  have  more  room  between  them  and  are  frequently  sur- 
rounded with  gardens  and  flowers. 

These  people,  who  were  subjected  to  western  influences  under 
the  rule  of  Poland,  were,  towards  the  seventeenth  century,  the 
first  intermediate  agents  between  Europe  and  Moscovia,  to  which, 
besides  vicinity,  they  were  attached  b)'  mutual  afl&nities  of  lan- 
guage and  religion.     Prior  to  Peter  the  Great,  and  partly  even  in 

*  For  a  knowledge  of  the  Little-Russian  songs  {piisni),  which  vie  with 
those  of  Serbia  for  the  palm  of  Slavic  popular  poetry,  consult  Bodenstedt, 
Dig  Poetische  Ukrain  (1845),  andRambaud,  La  Russie  J^pique  (1876). 

'*  In  what  way  ?  No  peasant  housewife  could  have  a  position  more 
honored,  independent,  masterful  than  the  mate  of  the  Great-Russian  and 
northern  husbandman.  As  among  the  Spartans  and  early  Romans,  she  is 
subject  and  responsible  only  to  her  "man,"  but  even  he  does  not  interfere 
with  her  house-rule  and  her  own  specially  feminine  branches  of  farming. 
The  produce  of  dairy  and  poultry  left  over  from  home  use,  the  surplus  of 
her  spinning  and  weaving,  are  hers  to  sell,  and  the  money,  by  immemorial 
unwritten,  but  all  the  more  compelling  law,  is  awarded  her  as  her  property 
to  hold  or  spend,  and  many  a  husband  has  received  a  flogging  by  decree  of 
the  mir  (village  assembly),  for  having  robbed  the  housewife  of  her  private 
hoard.  Aud  many  a  heifer  or  colt  finds  its  way  to  a  peasant's  stable 
that  would  never  have  come  there  but  for  her  savings — and  many  a  log 
house  has  been  roofed,  and  repaired,  and  made  snug  against  the  winter 
with  money  from  the  same  source.  The  southern  woman  may  dance  and 
sing  more  in  the  young  folk's  chorus  on  moonlight  nights  on  the  broad 
village  street,  and  sport  more  many-colored  ribbons  and  gay  silk  ker- 
chiefs, and  be  freer  of  talk  and  manner  with  the  village  swells,  but  hardly 
to  the  increase  of  her  dignity  and  moral  worth. 


RACES  AND  NATIONALITY.  \\J 

his  reign,  it  was  chiefly  through  their  instrumentality  that  Europe 
exerted  her  influence  over  Moscow  and  Russia. 

To  ]vittle-Russia  belonged  the  Zapor6gs,  the  most  famous  of 
those  Cosack  tribes  which  played  so  prominent  a  part  between 
Poland,  the  Tatars,  and  the  Turks,  in  the  Ukraina  or  southern 
steppes,  and  whose  name  will  ever  be  to  Russians  the  symbol  of 
free  and  independent  life.  Kazhtchestvo — Cosackdom — with  its 
liberal  or  democratical  traditions,  is  to  this  day  the  more  or  less 
conscious,  more  or  less  avowed  ideal  of  a  great  many  I^ittle- 
Russians.  Another  thing,  also  connected  with  the  history  of 
Ukraina,  the  foreign  descent  or  denationalization  of  a  great 
portion  of  the  upper  classes,  half  Polish  and  half  Great-Russian, 
equally  favors  democratic  instincts  in  the  I^ittle-Russian  people. 
For  this  twofold  reason,  the  Little-Russian  is  perhaps  less  imper- 
vious to  political  aspirations,  and  consequently  more  open  to 
revolutionary  blandishments  than  his  brother  of  Great-Russia.* 

Of  the  Cosacks  of  our  day,  those  of  the  Black  Sea,  transferred 
to  the  Kuban  between  the  Azof  Sea  and  the  Caucasus,  are  alone 
lyittle-Russians ;  those  of  the  Don  and  Ural  are  Great-Russians. 
To  the  seventeen  or  eighteen  millions  of  Little- Russians  residing 
in  Russia,  should  be  added,  on  ethnological  grounds,  about  three 
millions  more,  dwelling  in  Austria,  on  both  sides  of  the  Kar- 
pathian  Mountains,  in  Kastem  Galicia,  formerly  "  Red- Russia," 
in  Bukovine,  and  in  the  "  comitats  "  of  Northern  Hungary. 

The  claim  of  the  Little- Russians  to  the  name  and  quality  of 
Russians  has  been  contested,  as  well  as  that  of  the  White- Rus- 
sians,— virtually  one  third  of  the  Russian  people.  In  order  to 
separate  them  from  the  Great- Russians,  different  national  designa- 
tions have  been  sought  out  for  them.  At  one  time  the  name  of 
"Russian"  would  be  reserved  for  the  Great-Russian,  and  the 
others  would  be  given  the  Latin  name  of  "  Ruthenes,"  or  the 

*  This  seems  to  be  borne  out  by  several  political  trials  that  took  place 
between  1879  ^^^  \^^,  and  in  which  several  Ukmna  peasants  were  im- 
plicated. 


Il8      THE  EMPIRE  OF  THE    TSARS  AND   THE  RUSSIANS. 

Hungarian  one  of  "  Russni^,"  both  of  which  are  merely  a  tran- 
scription and  synonym  of  the  name  they  were  to  supplant.  At 
another  time  the  title  of  "  Russian  "  would  be  reserved  for  the 
Slavs  of  Little-Russia  and  White-Russia,  the  first  centres  of  the 
empire  ruled  by  the  descendants  of  Rurik,  while  it  would  be 
denied  to  Great-Russia,  on  which  was  inflicted  the  name  of 
"Moscovia."  These  bickerings  on  words,  gotten  up  not  by 
Little- Russians,  but  by  Poles,  in  no  wise  alter  the  facts.  Their 
only  effect  was  to  keep  up  between  luckless  Poland  and  Russia 
irreconcilable  pretensions,  which  have  brought  the  stronger 
nation  to  igfuore  the  nationality  of  the  weaker,  as  Poland  once 
had  ignored  that  of  her  Russian  subjects.  Sufi&ce  it  here  to 
establish  the  fact  that  these  designations:  "Ruthene,"  "  Russ- 
ni^k,"  "Russin,"  like  those  of  "Russ"  and  "Russian,"  used 
indifferently  and  interchangeably  by  old  writers  and  old  travellers, 
are  at  bottom  merely  forms  of  the  same  name,  designating  the 
same  nationality  at  least  within  the  limits  of  the  empire.* 

Separated  from  Great- Russia  at  the  time  of  the  Tatar  invasion 
Little-Russia  was  through  five  centuries  subject  to  Poland  and 
Lithuania,  not  to  much  purpose.  Only  the  polished  surface, — 
the  nobility  of  Kief,  Volhynia,  Podolia,  became  polonized.f    It  is 

*  Nowadays  these  diflFerent  terms,  particularly  that  of  "  Ruthene," 
ordinarily  applied  to  Uniats,  have  assumed  a  more  definite  sense.  Besides, 
the  Little-Russians  are  divided  into  three  distinct  types  with  as  many  prin- 
cipal dialects:  that  of  the  plain  of  Ukraine,  that  of  the  "Poli^ssiye"  or 
"forest  region  "  of  Kief,  and  that  of  Galicia  and  Pod61ia. 

t  Russian  statisticians  have  long  ago  called  attention  to  the  fact  that  in 
the  provinces  of  the  southwest— Podolia,  Volhynia,  Kief^usually  consid- 
ered as  Polish  by  the  Poles,  these  latter  are  in  reality  numerically  inferior 
to  the  Jews.  The  same  observation  applies  to  Lithuania  and  White-Russia, 
i.  e.  to  all  the  provinces  annexed  in  one  of  the  three  divisions  of  Poland. 
According  to  Mr.  Tchubinsky,  who  has  published  some  very  detailed  statis- 
tical tables  on  this  very  subject,  the  Poles  could  not  muster  100,000  strong 
in  the  above  three  governments  put  together.  Even  allowing  for  some 
exaggeration  in  the  Russian  documents,  still  so  much  remains — that  the 
figure  of  the  genuinely  Polish  population  is  extremely  low.  In  those  three 
governments,  the  number  of  the  Catholics,  among  vphom  there  certainly 
are  non-polonized  Little-Russians,  amounted  to  scarcely  400,000, — or  less 


RACES  AND  NATIONALITY.  1 19 

owing  pre-eminently  to  the  Greek  Orthodox  rite  that  the  bulk 
of  the  people,  the  immense  majority  of  the  inhabitants  of  Kief 
and  Ukraina  have  turned  out  quite  as  Russian  as  the  people 
of  Moscow.  It  matters  little  that  the  I^ittle-Russian  idiom 
deserves  the  title  of  language  rather  than  that  of  dialect ;  such 
was  the  case  with  the  Provencal  in  France  ; — ^it  matters  little 
even  that  the  people  of  I^ittle- Russia  and  Ukraina  are  entitled  to 
be  considered  as  a  nation  or  a  distinct  nationality.  This  question, 
ardently  discussed  by  scholars  as  well  as  by  Ukrainophil  patriots, 
is  one  of  those  which  should  not  be  settled  with  the  assistance  of 
ethnological  or  linguistical  arguments,  for  nationality  does  not 
really  reside  in  race  any  more  than  in  language,  but  in  a  people's 
consciousness.  What  admits  of  no  doubt  whatever  is  that,  in 
the  eyes  of  Western  Europe,  the  L^ittle- Russian  is  as  much  a 
Russian  as  the  Great-Russian. 

If  a  few  thinkers,  such  as  the  poet  Shevtchenko  *  and  the 
Ukrainophils,  have  been  suspected  of  a  wish  to  erect  I^ittle- Russia 
into  a  nation,  independent  of  both  Russia  and  Poland,  to  resume 
the  projects  of  Khmelnitsky  and  Mazeppa,  such  dreams  foimd 
not  much  more  echo  among  the  Little- Russians  than,  in  1870-71, 
the  projects  of  a  southern  league  met  with  in  the  south  of  France. 
The  contemporary  writers,  natives  of  Little- Russia,  are  almost 
unanimous  in  discountenancing  any  leaning  towards  secession, 
and  the  most  renowned  of  them,  Kostomarof,  severely  condemns 
Mazeppa,  the  last  statesman  who  seriously  undertook  to  separate 
Ukraina  from  Russia.  Ukrainophilism  and  the  Little-Russian 
poets  are  scarcely  more  dangerous  to  Russia  than  are  to  France's 

than  a  seventh  of  the  entire  population  (16.94  per  cent.).  In  these  same  three 
governments,  on  the  contrary,  the  number  of  the  Israelites  rose  to  over  750,000, 
nearly  double  that  of  the  Catholics.  See  Labors  of  the  Ethnographico- 
Statistical  Expedition ;  Materials  and  Investigations,  by  P.  Tchubinsky, 
vol.  vii.,  pp.  272-290. 

*  On  Shevtchenko,  orginally  a  serf,  then  by  turns  footman  and  soldier, 
painter  and  poet,  the  reader  might  look  up  an  interesting  study  by  M. 
Durand,  in  the  Revue  des  Deux  Mondes,  of  June  15,  1876. 


I20      THE  EMPIRE  OF  THE    TSARS  AND   THE  RUSSIANS. 

unity  the  revival  of  a  Provencal  literature,  and  those  "fSlibres'' 
of  the  south  in  whose  language  an  over-fastidious  police  might 
easily  detect  more  than  one  imprudent  expression.  Even  among 
their  partisans  the  tendencies  accused  of  separatism  are  mostly 
limited  to  wishes  for  decentralization  aud  provincial  autonomy,  to 
regrets  about  the  suppression,  by  Peter  the  Great  and  Catherine 
II.,  of  ancient  franchises,  to  a  feeling  of  repulsion  towards  the 
bureaucracy  imported  from  Moscow  and  Petersburgh.  The  most 
determined  of  Ukrainophils  do  not  go  beyond  federalistic  dreams, 
and  the  assertion  that  federalism  can  alone  g^ve  satisfaction  to  the 
numerous  peoples  of  alien  origin  scattered  over  the  vast  empire.* 
At  all  events,  the  obstacles  blunderingly  thrown  by  the  authori- 
ties in  the  way  of  the  difiiision  of  I^ittle-Russian  literature  and 
press,  even  of  the  use  of  a  dialect  which  alone  is  understood  by 
the  people,  are  not  exactly  calculated  to  stifle  in  the  I^ittle- 
Russian's  heart  the  hankering  after  autonomy  which  it  is  expected 
to  destroy  in  the  germ  by  such  means. 

It  is  a  notable  portion  of  the  national  genius  that  Russian 
censure  dooms  to  silence  and  obscurity  by  the  proscription  of  an 
idiom  spoken  by  more  mouths  than  Serb  and  Bulgar  put  together ; 
a  notable  portion  of  the  Russian  people,  perhaps  the  best  gifted 
for  art  and  poetry,  that  Petersburgh  bureaucracy  deprives  of  all 
means  of  expression,  all  means  of  instruction.  In  Russia  less 
than  anywhere  else,  spirits  scornful  of  languages  restricted  within 
narrow  bounds  and  provincial  dialects  should  indulge  in  any 
illusions ;  popular  speech,  doomed  to  perish  in  the  course  of  time, 
does  not  suffer  itself  to  be  evicted  in  a  few  years  ;  it  is  easier  to 
forbid  the  use  of  it  by  ordinances  and  decrees  than  to  substitute 
for  it  in  daily  practice  the  official  literary  language.  In  the  inter- 
val, the  hand  which,  under  pretence  of  opening  to  them  a  wider 
window  on  the  world,  closes  the  humble  transom  through  which 

*  See  especially  Hrotndda  of  Mr.  Dragom&nof  and,  by  the  same 
author,  Historical  Pbland  and  Great-Russian  Democracy,  Geneva,  1882. 


RACES  AND  NATIONALITY.  121 

light  could  reach  them,  consigns  to  ignorance  millions  of  human 
creatures. 

The  diflferences  in  race,  dialect,  character,  which  distinguish 
the  two  chief  Russian  tribes,  are  not  greater  than  those  which  exist 
between  the  north  and  south  of  the  Western  states  whose  unity, 
whether  ancient  or  recent,  is  best  assured.  As  to  the  race  itself 
in  the  name  of  which  certain  ethnologists  pretend  to  separate 
them,  there  is  far  less  distance  between  the  Russian  tribes  than  is 
commonly  imagined.  If  the  Great-Russian  has  been  mixed  more 
with  Finns,  the  lyittle- Russian  perhaps  mixed  more  with  Tatars, 
of  whom  his  princes  at  Kief  received  and  sheltered  whole  tribes, 
while  his  Cosacks  of  the  steppes  recruited  from  among  them 
numbers  of  fugitives  and  comrades  for  their  life  of  adventure. 
Far  from  being  naturally  antagonistic  to  each  other,  the  Little- 
Russian  and  the  Great- Russian  have  much  in  common  :  geogra- 
phy, which  would  hardly  allow  of  the  weaker  party  having  a 
separate  existence  ;  historical  traditions  and  antipathies,  common 
to  both  ;  religion,  still  regarded  by  both  as  the  foremost  power  of 
all;  and  lastly,  the  twofold  kinship  of  language  and  origin. 
They  mutually  complete  each  other,  and  lend  their  common 
country  that  complex  character  and  genius,  which,  when  enfolded 
in  tmity,  has  made  the  greatness  of  all  the  great  nations  in  history. 


BOOK  II.      CHAPTER  V. 

Russia  and  the  Historical  Nationalities  of  Her  Western  Boundaries — Ob- 
stacles to  Russification — Germans  and  German  Influence — Antipathy 
against  the  Niimets — Germans  in  the  Baltic  Provinces  and  in  Poland 
— The  Polish  Question — Mutual  Interest  of  Russians  and  Poles  in  a 
Reconciliation — Plebeian  Nationalities  and  Democratical  Policy. 

The  Russian  nation,  including  even  the  Little-Russians  and 
White-Russians,  occupies  the  interior  of  the  empire,  but  does  not 
begin  to  fill  out  the  frame.  On  no  side,  unless  it  be  the  Black  and 
White  Seas,  and  unless  we  take  the  Ukrainians  skirting  Eastern 
Galicia,  does  the  Russian  people  reach  the  limits  of  Russia.  On 
nearly  all  its  frontiers,  it  is  encompassed  by  populations  of  alien 
origin,  divided  into  two  principal  bands :  one  in  the  east,  towards 
Asia,  composed  of  Finns,  Bashkirs,  Tatars,  Kirghiz,  Kalmyks ; 
the  other,  more  considerable  but  not  more  homogeneous,  in  the 
west,  facing  Europe,  along  the  most  vulnerable  flank  line  of 
Russia,  the  only  one  on  which  she  confines  with  powerful  neigh- 
bors. At  certain  times  the  government  at  St.  Petersburgh  may 
well  find  there  material  for  weighty  and  apprehensive  thought. 

It  is  to  be  noted  that  the  main  element  of  the  nation — the 
nucleus  of  it — the  Great- Russian — comes  into  actual  contact  with 
these  western  populations  on  one  point  only,  and  that  the  least 
exposed,  the  shore  of  the  Gulf  of  Finland,  by  a  region,  moreover, 
that  counts  among  the  poorest  and  least  peopled.  In  the  centre 
and  south,  between  ancient  Moscovia  and  the  conquests  of  Peter 
the  Great  and  Catherine  II.,  between  Great- Russia  on  one  side 
and  Livonia,  Lithuania,  Poland,  on  the  other,  lie  White- Russia 


RACES  AND  NATIONALITY.  1 23 

and  Little- Russia,  which  being,  as  one  might  say,  Russian  only 
in  the  second  degree  are  far  less  proper  to  russify  others.  This 
inconvenience  is  increased  by  the  scantiness  of  the  population  in 
White-Russia  and  the  swamps  of  Pinsk  in  the  region  bordering 
on  Little-Russia.  These  two  districts  have  dug,  between  the 
best-peopled  regions  of  old  Moscovia  and  her  conquests  of  the  last 
two  centuries,  a  sort  of  half-desert  gulf,  which,  in  spite  of  the  fine 
draining  works  going  on  in  the  marshes  of  the  Pripet,*  cannot 
possibly  fill  rapidly.  The  Poles,  lyithuanians,  Letts,  and  Germans 
of  the  west  thus  find  themselves  protected  against  russification 
by  a  double  barrier  ;  and  this  accounts  for  the  trifling  progress  it 
makes.  The  same  phenomenon  can  be  explained  by  still  another 
consideration.  Population,  like  water,  naturally  inclines  towards 
a  vacuum  and  finds  its  own  level.  So  it  is  towards  the  east  and 
Asia,  not  towards  the  west  and  Europe — towards  the  oriental 
regions,  insufficiently  peopled  as  yet,  and  not  towards  provinces 
peopled  frequently  more  densely  than  the  interior  of  the  empire, 
that  the  surplus  of  Russian  population  naturally  flows. 

With  sixty-eight  or  seventy  millions  of  Russians,  it  is  no  very 
great  thing  to  have  some  fourteen  or  fifteen  millions  non-russified, 
which  is  all  that  European  Russia  has  to  show,  outside  of  Fin- 
land, Poland,  and  the  Caucasus, — those  being,  moreover,  divided 
into  over  ten  peoples  and  nearly  as  many  languages  and  religions. 
If  we  take  in  the  kingdom  of  Poland  and  Finland,  the  figure  will 
mount  up  to  twenty-four  or  twenty-five  millions,  and  to  three  or 
four  more  if  we  add  thereto  that  Babel — the  Caucasus,  which 
should  rather  be  considered  as  a  colony,  and  which,  alone,  num- 
bers about  as  many  peoples  and  tribes  as  all  the  rest  of  the 
empire.!    All  these  populations  are  for  the  most  part  too  weak, 

*  The  works  carried  out  in  this  region  constitute  one  of  the  finest  under- 
takings of  the  kind  in  Europe.  In  1889  a  good  deal  over  two  million  acres 
had  been  already  drained. 

t  According  to  Mr.  Rittich,  the  population  of  the  Caucasus,  even  prior 
to  the  annexations  sanctioned  by  the  treaty  of  Berlin,  was  divided  into 
twelve  principal  groups,  speaking  sixty-eight  diflFerent  dialects. 


124      TH^  EMPIRE  OF  THE    TSARS  AND    THE  RUSSIANS. 

too  fragmentary,  to  have  any  claim  to  independence  ;  they  will  let 
themselves  be  assimilated  by  the  mere  force  of  progressing  civili- 
zation, everywhere  unfavorable  to  small  tribes  and  shut-in 
languages.  Many  of  these  aUogens  (aliens),  as  the  Finns  of  the 
interior  or  the  Gmzins  (commonly  called  Georgians)  of  Trans- 
caucasia, are  nearly  as  devoted  to  the  Tsar  as  his  natural-bom 
Russian  subjects.  Others,  such  as  the  two  million  Ehsts  and 
Letts  of  the  Baltic  provinces,  find  in  the  Russian  government 
a  protection  against  the  aristocratical  oligarchy  and  the  burgher 
arrogance  of  160,000  Germans.  These  latter  and  their  kindred  of 
the  interior  are  urged  by  self-interest,  in  spite  of  enticements  from 
abroad,  to  remain  subjects  of  a  state  in  which,  notwithstanding 
their  scant  numbers,  they  occupy  so  ample  a  place ;  where, 
thanks  to  the  antiquity  of  their  civilization,  thanks  to  certain 
Teutonic  qualities — a  taste  for  work,  the  spirit  of  order  and  ex- 
actness,— thanks  also  to  comradeship,  worldly  connections,  and 
influences  at  court,  they  have  for  a  long  time  filled  the  high 
posts  of  the  military  and  civil  careers,  so  that,  in  the  vast  Slavic 
Empire,  the  Germans,  until  very  lately,  appeared  to  be  the 
privileged  race.* 

*  The  proportion  of  Germans  goes  on  increasing  progressively  from  the 
lower  to  the  highest  charges,  both  civil  and  military.  It  is  notorious  how 
Alexander  III.,  then  heir  to  the  crown,  at  a  reception  of  the  highest  stafiF 
oflBcers,  after  several  generals  with  German  names  had  been  presented  to 
him,  exclaimed,  "  At  last ! "  at  the  first  Russian  name  he  heard.  Yet  there 
have  been  stories  current  about  the  antipathy  of  the  future  Alexander  III. 
and  his  wife  against  the  Germans,  which  got  some  Frenchmen,  who  took 
them  literally,  into  sad  trouble.  Thus  once,  at  an  official  dinner,  the  then 
French  ambassador  having  thanked  the  Cesar6vitch  for  the  sympathy  he  had 
shown  France  in  the  war  of  1870-71,  the  latter  turned  his  back  on  him  with- 
out vouchsafing  a  word  in  reply.' 

'  There  is  a  very  popular  story,  illustrative  of  this  galling  state  of 
things,  about  General  Yermolof,  one  of  the  heroes  of  the  now  epic  war 
against  Shamil  and  his  fanatical  robber  tribes  of  the  Caucasus, — a  blunt 
old  warrior,  as  notorious  for  plain  speaking  as  for  bravery  and  military 
genius.  It  is  said  that  the  Emperor  Alexander  II.  received  him  at  a  private 
audience,  to  congratulate  him  on  a  victory  which  prepared  the  final  one  by 
which  Prince  Bari^tinsky,  another  Theseus,  freed  Russia  from  the  annual 
blood  tribute  which  she  had  been  paying  for  half  a  century  to  the  murderous 


RACES  AND  NATIONALITY.  1 25 

This  sort  of  supremacy,  which  the  Germans  exert  both  in  pri- 
vate and  public  life,  cannot  but  excite  in  the  Russians  feelings  of 
distrust  and  jealousy  which,  at  times,  break  out  into  loud  protest. 
The  national  feeling  rebels  against  the  sway  of  the  Germans, 
accused  as  they  are  of  forming  in  the  administration  as  well  as  in 
business  a  sort  of  corporation,  the  members  of  which  support  one 
another  at  the  cost  of  the  state  and  of  private  persons.'  In  Peters- 
burgh,  and  especially  in  Moscow,  the  periodical  press  continuously 

'There  are  sundry  trades  and  professions  of  which  the  Germans  have 
appropriated  the  monopoly,  which  they  guard  as  fiercely  as  though  it  had 
been  legally  bestowed  on  them.  Twenty  years  ago  the  bakers  and  the 
apothecaries  (druggists  and  pharmacists)  were  all  German,  and  that  all  over 
the  country.  It  was  impossible  for  a  Russian  to  get  into  a  bakery  as  appren- 
tice or  even  errand  boy.  At  last  an  enterprising  Moscow  man  started  in 
Petersburgh,  in  a  fashionable  quarter,  a  "Moscow  bakery."  The  venture 
was  a  success,  the  number  of  "  Russian  bakeries  "  and  "  Moscow  bakeries  " 
increased  rapidly — at  first  in  the  two  capitals — till  it  rivalled  that  of  the 
German  ones.  This  was  partly,  of  course,  a  "  demonstration,"  but  what 
made  the  success  a  permanent  one,  is  the  fact  that  there  are  some  special 
kinds  of  plain  and  fancy  breads,  thoroughly  national  in  quality  and  shape, 
which  the  Germans  never  could  produce,  and  which,  until  this  popular 
movement  was  started,  could  be  got  only  from  itinerant  sellers  or  at  open- 
air  stands  in  the  more  populous  commercial  quarters.  The  pharmacists' 
"ring"  was  more  diflBcult  to  break.  On  no  consideration  whatever  could 
a  Russian  obtain  access  to  a  prescription  counter  or  laboratory.  I  have 
personally  known  young  men  of  good  family,  university  graduates,  having 
brilliantly  passed  all  the  examinations  required  by  the  law  of  pharmacists' 
assistants  ("pro visors")  whose  continuous  efforts  were  met  with  as  con- 
tinuous defeats,  till  they  were  forced  into  some  other  work  than  that  for 
which  they  had  spent  their  youth  preparing  themselves.  When  I  left, 
eighteen  years  ago,  one  Russian  drug  store  had  just  been  started,  and  the 
success  was  still  uncertain. 

Minotaurs  of  the  mountain  labyrinth.  Alexander  was  a  kind  man  and  a 
generous  master,  and  the  thanks  and  praise  he  bestowed  on  his  faithful  old 
servant  were  meted  out  unstintingly,  winding  up  with  the  command  to 
select  any  favour  within  the  power  of  the  imperial  hand  to  bestow.  Where- 
upon the  General  is  reported  to  have  replied  that  his  gracious  sovereign's 
bounty  had  left  him  nothing  to  wish  for — "  Unless,"  bethinking  himself  of 
a  crowning  boon — "  Unless  it  might  be  your  Majesty's  pleasure  to  promote 
me  into  a  German  !  "  The  point  of  the  story  is  greatly  sharpened  by  the 
fact  that  the  first  half  of  the  General's  career  had  been  one  long  struggle 
against  German  esprit  de  corps  and  nepotism.  Whether  the  thing  occurred 
just  so  or  not — who  shall  tell?  At  all  events  it  is  eminently  a  case  of  "  ^^ 
non  h  vero,  i  ben  irovatoV 


126      THE  EMPIRE  OF  THE   TSARS  AND    THE  RUSSIANS. 

Stimulates  Russia  to  throw  oflf  the  political  and  economical  yoke 
of  the  niimets^ — a  yoke  the  weight  of  which  certain  patriots 
very  greatly  exaggerate,  and  which  they  seem  as  unable  to  shake 
off  entirely  as  to  bear  it  patiently.  To  the  twofold  jarring  pro- 
duced by  individual  self-love  and  by  national  pride,  is  added  the 
antipathy  in  both  mind  and  character  which  of  yore  exists  between 
the  Slav  and  the  Teuton.  This  secular  antipathy  has  repeatedly 
manifested  itself  in  Russian  society,  especially  since  the  treaty  of 
Berlin,  in  rather  curious  ways :  by  more  or  less  malicious  jeers 
at  the  Teutonic  accent  and  manners,  in  petty,  often  puerile, 
taunts,  by  affecting  a  more  or  less  sincere  contempt  for  the  arts, 
literature,  and  products  of  Germany — affecting  indeed  to  be  ignor- 
ant of  the  German  language  or  purposely  disfiguring  it,  so  that  it 
came  to  pass  that  I,  a  Frenchman,  more  than  once  took  up  the 
cudgels  in  defence  of  the  conquerors  of  Alsace-Lorraine  against 
their  neighbors,  the  Russians. 

This  repulsion  against  the  Germans,  which  breaks  out  in 
periodical  spells,  might  appear  excessive  and  ridiculous,  were  it 
not  justified  by  the  political  apprehensions  aroused  by  the  resur- 
rection of  the  German  Empire  and  the  invasive  propensities  of  the 
Germanic  race.  Had  Alexander  II.  followed  the  national  instinct 
and  shared  the  preferences  of  his  subjects,  he  should  not  have 
congratulated  his  uncle,  Wilhelm,  on  the  battle  of  Sedan,  nor 
should  he  have  connived  at  the  mutilation  of  France.  In  un- 
prejudiced eyes,  Germany  is  assuredly  more  dangerous  to  Russia 
than  to  France,  In  France's  case,  indeed,  the  empire  of  the 
Hohenzollems  encounters  a  compact  nationality,  difl&cult  to  break 
into,  offering  no  handle  to  Teutonic  assimilation.  The  same 
cannot  be  said  of  the  east  of  Europe,  where  Germany,  jointly  with 
Prussia,  has  been  steadily  aggrandizing  itself,  century  after  cen- 
tury. Now,  the  Russians  don't  care  to  see  their  Western  neigh- 
bor carry  on  at  their  expense  on  the  Visla,  the  Ni6men,  or  the 

*  Niimets  originally  means  '•  dumb,"  one  who  cannot  speak  ;  therefore 
"•foreigner,"  a  German. 


RACES  AND  NATIONALITY.  12/ 

Dvina,  his  secular  encroachments  on  territory  belonging  to  the 
Slavs  or  to  the  I^etto-Iyithuanians. 

There  are  no  German  provinces  in  the  Russian  Empire.  This 
designation,  often  used  by  the  Germans  and  even  by  the  French, 
as  applied  to  the  three  Baltic  provinces,  is  absolutely  incorrect, 
and  it  is  easy  to  understand  why  the  Russians  will  decidedly  not 
tolerate  the  misnomer.  Statistics  have  long  ago  established  the 
fact  that,  in  these  pretended  * '  German  ' '  provinces — Uvonia  or 
lyiefland,  Esthonia  or  Esthland,  and  Curland, — the  Germans  do 
not,  in  reality,  make  out  one  tenth  of  the  population,  the  immense 
majority  of  which  consists  of  I>tts  in  the  south  and  Finns  in  the 
north.  The  modem  principle  of  nationality,  which,  by  the  way, 
when  not  grounded  in  national  consciousness,  merely  furnishes  a 
novel  instrument  of  oppression,  supplies,  from  this  side,  no  pre- 
tence for  the  clamoring  for  restitution  kept  up  by  the  Germans. 
But  neither  numbers,  nor  race,  nor  language  are  everything  in  a 
country.  It  matters  little  that  the  Germans,  on  the  lower  course 
of  the  Dvina,  constitute  a  minority  amounting  to  a  minimum ; 
they  have  ruled  the  land  too  long  by  force  of  arms,  by  trade,  by 
religion,  by  all  that  goes  to  make  up  civilization,  not  to  have 
impressed  their  stamp  on  it. 

The  mark  of  the  Hansa  is  discernible  ever5rwhere  in  the  cities, 
and  that  of  feudal  Germany  everywhere  in  the  country,  owned 
by  the  heirs  of  the  "  Sword-bearers. ' '  Take  it  all  in  all — ^manners, 
history,  traditions — ^the  Baltic  country  is  far  more  German  than 
was  Alsace-Lorraine  in  1870.  It  might  even  be  said  without  para- 
dox, that  these  Russian  provinces,  peopled  by  Letts  and  Finns, 
were  the  most  German  country  on  the  continent,  so  largely  had 
mediaeval  Germany  survived  there. 

It  is  but  natural  that  the  Russian  government,  who  has  ruled 
them  for  the  last  two  centuries,  should  seek  to  de-germanize  and 
to  modernize  its  Baltic  provinces,  in  spite  of  charters  or  privileges 
granted  to  the  Lieflanders  by  Peter  the  Great  on  the  occasion  of 
their  annexation.     It  is  but  natural  that,  in  order  to  diminish  the 


128      THE  EMPIRE  OF  THE   TSARS  AND    THE  RUSSIANS, 

German  preponderance,  Petersburgh  and  Moscow  should  call  in 
the  aid  of  the  former  Finn  or  I,ett  serf ;  but  such  an  undertaking 
everjrwrhere  requires  more  than  average  prudence,  patience,  mod- 
eration. 

The  German  spirit  and  moral  influence  are  too  deeply  rooted 
in  the  soil  to  allow  of  easy  eradication,  nor  can  a  country's  attach- 
ment be  obtained  without  taking  into  account  its  customs  and 
traditions.  Were  it  to  follow  all  the  inspirations  of  ultra-zealous 
russifiers,  the  Russian  government,  on  the  plea  of  assimilating  the 
Baltic  country,  would  run  the  risk  of  alienating  it,  nay,  of  creating 
in  it  a  separatist  party,  by  irritating  the  ruling  classes,  and  those 
German-Russians  whose  allegiance  to  the  Tsars  has  always  been 
untainted  and  who,  from  Barclay-de-Tolly  down  to  Totleben,  and 
from  Ostermann  to  Nesselrode,  have  furnished  more  than  one 
illustrious  general  or  distinguished  statesman."  On  the  Dvina, 
just  as  on  the  Visla  and  on  the  Dniepr,  the  best  way  of  securing 
the  Russian  rule  is,  after  all,  to  make  it  mild,  not  to  do  violence 
to  the  local  manners  and  traditions,  at  least  in  so  far  as  they  are 
compatible  with  the  spirit  of  the  age  and  the  preservation  of  the 
empire's  integrity.* 

The  Baltic  provinces  are  not  the  only  ones  where  the  Russians 
have  to  keep  an  eye  on  germanism.     In  reality,  it  is  not  even 

*  It  were  a  great  mistake  to  imagine  that  a  German  name  is  a  sure  index 
of  anti-Russian  feeling,  or  a  Russian  one  is  a  sure  pledge  of  patriotism. 
Men  with  uncompromising  German  names,  like  Hilferding,  historian-archae- 
ologist ;  Orestes  Miller,  philologist  and  folk-lorisf,  Dahl,  the  compiler  of 
the  great  national  dictionary,  collector  of  the  popular  proverbs  and  saws, 
are  found  foremost  in  the  front  ranks  of  Russian  nationalist  workers,  with 
a  moderate  leaning  towards  slavophilism,  while  a  Count  Shuvilof  was  a 
notorious  contemner  of  all  things  national,  and  did  his  best  to  scare  Alex- 
ander II,  out  of  his  fixed  purpose  of  freeing  the  serfs,  by  conjuring  up 
insurrections,  wholesale  massacres  of  landlords,  and  other  like  bugbears. 

*  Perhaps  no  question  in  Europe  has  given  rise  to  so  large  a  quantity  of 
writings  of  all  sorts  as  this  question  about  the  Baltic  provinces,  which  it  is 
impossible  to  enter  into  here  with  any  details.  A  whole  library  might  be 
made  up  of  nothing  but  the  Russian  and  especially  German  books  and 
pamphlets  called  forth  by  George  Samarin's  Borderland  of  Russia. 


RACES  AND  NATIONALITY.  1 29 

die  niimets  who  is  most  to  be  dreaded.  Curland,  lyiefland,  and 
Esthland  are,  by  their  geographical  position,  bound  to  the  great 
empire  of  which  they  occupy  the  coastland,  and  whose  trafl&c  is 
carried  on  by  their  seaports.  Severed  from  Russia,  the  three 
provinces  would  be  as  good  as  cut  off  from  the  continent  and 
would  fall  into  a  situation  analogous  to  that  of  Austrian  Dalmatia 
before  the  occupation  of  Bosnia  and  Herzegovina  gave  her  a  "back- 
ground," And  it  is  not  even  in  the  Baltic  provinces  that  there 
are  most  Germans. 

Apart  from  their  trading  colonies  in  the  cities  and  from  their 
rural  agricultural  colonies,  also  scattered  from  end  to  end  of  the 
empire,  the  Germans  gradually  filtered  into  the  provinces  confin- 
ing with  Prussia  and  Austria — into  Poland,  Lithuania  and  I^ittle- 
Russia.*  On  many  points  they  slowly  gained  possession  of  the 
soil  and  capital,  notwithstanding  the  competition  of  the  indigenous 
Jews,  who,  moreover,  might,  under  certain  cfrcumstances,  as  it 
happened  in  Poznania  (Posen),  become  their  auxiliaries  and 
smooth  the  way  for  germanization.f  In  the  Kingdom  of  Poland 
more  particularly,  the  Germans  are  already  more  numerous  in 
proportion  than  they  are  in  the  Baltic  provinces,  which  are 
regarded  as  their  main  centre. 

The  Polish  question,  so  many  times  settled  in  so  many  contra- 
dictory ways  in  the  course  of  the  last  century,  is,  in  reality,  lined 
with  a  German  question  also.  The  fault  is,  partly,  the  Russian 
policy's,  which,  in  its  dread  of  polonism,  favored  germanism, 
permitting  Germans,  until  1884,  to  purchase  land,  while  denying 
the  same  privilege  to  Poles  and  Jews.  "I  dread  the  Germans 
less  than  the  Poles,"  wrote  Nicolas  MiUMin  immediately  after 

*  The  statistics  of  travellers  crossing  the  frontiers  show  that  30,  40,  and 
sometimes  50,000  more  Germans  enter  Russia  every  year  than  leave  it,  not 
counting  30  or  40,000  Austrians,  part  of  whom  are  Germans. 

t  To  prevent  rural  real  estate  passing  into  the  hands  of  Germans,  Alex- 
ander III.  has  proceeded  to  radical  measures.  By  an  imperial  ukhz  or  decree 
dated  1884,  foreigners  are  forbidden  from  acquiring  land  in  the  western 
jffovinces,  either  by  purchase  or  even  by  inheritance. 


130      THE  EMPIRE  OF   THE   TSARS  AND    THE  RUSSIANS. 

the  insurrection  of  1863.*  Miliiitin  would  hardly  speak  so  to-day. 
The  most  clear-sighted  patriots  admit  that  Russia  could  not  solve 
this  much-vexed  Polish  question  against  both  Poles  and  Germans, 
any  more  than  the  Poles  can  flatter  themselves  that  it  could  be 
settled  against  both  Russians  and  Germans.  The  Russian  who 
insists  on  denationalizing  the  provinces  on  the  Visla,  and  the 
Pole  who  declines  any  terms  whatever  with  Russia,  are  equally 
in  danger  of  working  for  the  Prussians,  who  have  not  forgotten 
that  they  ruled  in  Warsaw  before  Russia  did. 

There  are  indeed  Russians  who,  to  see  the  end  of  this  ever- 
lasting Polish  question,  would  like  to  make  over  to  Germany  the 
whole  of  Poland  proper,  f  or  at  least  the  half  of  the  kingdom  situ- 
ated west  of  the  Visla,  reserving  the  right  to  look  for  a  compensa- 
tion from  Austria  or  from  Turkey.  This  would  be  Finis  Poloniee 
indeed ;  yet,  though  the  combination  was  at  one  time  much  ex- 
tolled, it  would  not  find  many  advocates  nowadays. 

Not  to  mention  a  natural  repugnance  to  sacrificing  an  old 
Slavic  land  to  germanism,  or  the  diflBculty  of  drawing  a  botmdary 
line  at  the  gates  of  Warsaw,  or  else  give  up  this  capital  itself  to 
Prussia,  the  Russians  understand  that,  once  the  Germans  are  suf- 
fered to  take  firm  footing  in  the  heart  of  Poland,  they  must  fatally 
yield  to  the  temptation  of  gradually  absorbing  the  whole.  Warsaw 
would  be  to  the  Prussians  merely  a  stopping-place.  Once  installed 
on  the  Visla,  they  could  extend  their  greed  to  the  rest  of  the 
kingdom,  and  as  far  as  I^ithuania,  Esthonia,  and  I^ivonia.  They 
could,  alone  or  jointly  with  Austria,  devour  the  whole  of  ancient 
Poland,  province  by  province. 

*  Unpublished  letter  from  N.  Miliitin  to  Tcherkassky,  8/20  February, 
1865. 

t  The  kingdom  of  Poland  or  "  Congress  Poland  "  {KongresSwka)  wa», 
as  is  well  known,  constructed  out  of  such  portions  of  the  ancient  "  Grand 
Duchy  of  Warsaw  "  as  were  awarded  to  Alexander  I.  in  1815,  and  by  him 
endowed  with  a  constitution.  In  the  eyes  of  the  Russians  this  "  Congress- 
kingdom  "  alone  constitutes  the  whole  of  Russian  Poland.  They  take  their 
stand  on  history  and  ethnography  when  they  refuse  to  recognize  as  Polish 
the  provinces  annexed  by  Catherine  IL  at  the  time  of  the  three  divisions  of 
the  eighteenth  century. 


RACES  AND  NATIONALITY.  I3I 

The  Poles  should  dread  no  less  than  the  Russians  any  cession 
to  the  heirs  of  Frederic  the  Great.  Poland's  curse  is  that  the 
Poles,  with  all  their  brilliant  qualities,  with  their  noble  chival- 
rous spirit,  their  generous  patriotism,  have  always,  both  before 
and  after  the  divisions  of  the  eighteenth  century,  shown  poor 
political  spirit.  Still,  in  this  respect,  their  long  misfortunes  do  not 
appear  to  have  been  entirely  lost  upon  them.  They  have  become 
more  practical,  more  positive,  less  inclined  to  indulge  in  the  vast 
dreams  and  chimerical  fancies  of  old.  Many  of  them  have  found 
out  that,  for  their  nationality,  the  Russian  rule  is  infinitely  less  to 
be  dreaded  than  the  German,  and  that  Warsaw  cannot  nurse  the 
hope  of  wholly  escaping  both.  The  reunion  of  Russian  Poland 
with  Austrian  Galicia,  the  day-dream  of  certain  patriots,  is  a 
mere  Utopia,  which  geography  alone  would  effectually  dispose  of. 
There  exists  a  project,  put  forward  at  times  in  Germany,  propos- 
ing the  erection  of  the  ' '  Congress-kingdom  ' '  into  a  vassal  state 
or  confederate  of  Germany,  but  it  is  only  a  piece  of  delusive  mirage 
behind  which  lurks  German  absorption.  A  fifth  or  sixth  division 
would  be  the  saddest  thing  that  could  befall  Poland,  and  her 
patriots  surely  must  regret  that,  in  181 5,  France  caused  the 
propositions  of  Alexander  I.  to  be  rejected,  and  suffered  Poznania 
(Posen)  to  be  made  over  to  Prussia  and  germanization. 

When  we  consider  what  history  has  done  with  Schlesien  (Sile- 
sia), Poznania,  and  Old  Prussia,  we  can  assert  that  the  Russian 
rule  is,  for  the  Poland  of  the  Visla,  for  Warsaw  and  Mazovia,  the 
best,  perhaps  the  only,  possible  guarantee  against  germanization. 
The  Poles,  in  declaring  themselves  irreconcilable  toward  Russia, 
appear  to  an  impartial  outsider  to  be  committing  a  sort  of  national 
suicide. 

This  is  felt  more  and  more  on  the  banks  of  the  Visla,  and  anx- 
iety for  the  future  prevails  over  old  grudges.  Fear  of  Germany 
balances  hatred  of  Russia.  Economic  considerations  too  work  in 
the  same  direction.  From  a  material  point  of  view,  Poland  has 
everything  to  gain  from  union  with  the  great  Slavic  Empire,  which 
offers  immense  openings  to  her  industry.     Russian  Poland  has 


132      THE  EMPIRE  OF   THE    TSARS  AND   THE  RUSSIANS. 

greatly  changed  since  the  insurrection  of  1863.  She  is  beyond 
comparison  wealthier  than  Galicia  and  Poznania.  Agriculture 
has  prospered.  The  peasant,  now  a  landholder,  has  enjoyed  com- 
forts hitherto  unknown  to  him.  The  cities  have  become  crowded 
with  factories  ;  Warsaw's  population  has  been  doubled,  that  of 
Lodzi  and  other  cities  quadrupled,  and  more,  all  within  twenty 
years.  The  rise  of  tariffs,  the  exaggeration  of  which  is,  in  our 
belief,  one  of  the  obstacles  to  the  development  of  Russia,  has  been 
of  considerable  advantage  to  Poland,  placed  as  that  country  is  in 
better  conditions  for  production.  A  great  portion  of  the  empire 
pays  tribute  to  Poland's  industry — itself,  it  is  true,  frequently  placed 
in  German  hands.  Any  custom-house  barrier  raised  between  the 
two  countries  would  kill  the  industry  of  the  kingdom,  which  then 
would  find  it  hard  to  hold  out  against  the  competition  of  Schlesien 
and  Westphalia.  In  our  day  material  interests  are  a  strong  chain ; 
and  Russia,  by  suppressing  the  custom-house  system  between  the 
kingdom  and  the  empire,  has,  perhaps  unconsciously,  bound  the 
Poles  by  the  only  tie  which  Polish  hands  would  be  loth  to  sever. 

Thus  the  two  main  and  often  hostile  springs  which  govern 
men  and  nations — material  interests  and  abstract  considerations — 
are  at  one  in  this  case,  to  bring  about  the  reunion  to  Russia  of  the 
most  unmanageable  among  the  peoples  subject  to  her  imperial 
sceptre.  In  spite  of  irritating  memories,  of  the  blundering  at- 
tempts at  russification  pursued  since  1864,  stubbornness  is  no 
longer  so  deeply  rooted  in  Polish  hearts.  The  conciliating  policy 
of  Vi61op51sky — a  policy  which,  imfortunately  for  both  nations, 
numbered  so  few  partisans  about  i860 — would  now  command  an 
immense  majority.* 

*  According  to  Russian  statistics,  the  nnmber  of  the  Poles  subject  to  the 
empire  scarcely  reaches  six  million  souls.  They  form  a  large  majority  in 
the  kingdom  created  by  the  Vienna  Congress,  where  they  amount  to 
about  seventy  per  cent  of  the  total  population,  but  in  the  other  parts  of  an- 
cient Poland  they  constitute  a  feeble  minority.  To  these  genuine  Poles  of 
Polish  descent  must  be  added,  in  order  to  calculate  the  efficient  force  of 
"  Polonism,"  a  certain  number  of  Lithuanians,  Little-Russians,  White-R\i»- 
sians,  and  even  of  Germans,  and  more  or  less  polonized  Jews. 


RACES  AND  NATIONALITY.  1 33 

The  trouble  is  that  in  the  Russian  "borderlands  "  {pkrhiny)^ 
as  in  Austria,  as  in  Turkey,  these  questions  of  nationalities  are 
far  from  being  as  plain  as  they  appear  in  theory.  With  the  best 
will  in  the  world  it  is  frequently  impossible  to  solve  them  to  every- 
body's satisfaction.  Side  by  side  with  regions  held  by  a  clearly 
defined  nationality,  possessed  of  continuous  historical  traditions, 
there  are  countries  inhabited  by  mixed  races,  often  openly  hostile 
to  one  another.  The  Baltic  provinces  are  a  case  in  point— but  by 
no  means  the  only  one.  The  greatest  portion  of  ancient  Poland, 
the  provinces  annexed  to  Russia  at  the  time  of  the  three  first  par- 
titions, are  more  or  less  in  a  like  predicament.  That  indeed  was 
one  of  the  things  which  made  the  dismemberment  of  the  Common- 
wealth easy,  and  reconciliation  between  the  former  and  the  new 
masters  of  the  soil  very  difficult  to  achieve. 

The  chief  obstacle  to  an  agreement  between  Russians  and  Poles 
has  always  been  the  part  of  Ukraina  situated  on  the  right  bank  of 
the  Dniepr,  and  especially  Lithuania,  these  provinces  being  looked 
upon  by  the  former  as  Russian  and  by  the  latter  as  Polish,  the 
Poles  taking  preferably  the  standpoint  of  the  wealthy  and  culti- 
vated classes,  the  landlords  or  the  city  burghers  ;  the  Russians, 
instead,  taking  thought  of  the  rural  classes,  the  peasant,  the 
manumitted  serf  freed  by  Alexander  II. 

In  the  greater  portion  of  ancient  Poland — not  the  ' '  Congress- 
kingdom" — as  well  as  in  the  three  Baltic  provinces,  national 
rivalries  often  are  made  more  complicated  by  strife  between  the 
classes.  Nationalities,  and  at  times  religions,  are,  in  a  way,  dis- 
posed in  layers.  While  the  upper  classes — the  nobility  and 
landlords — are  Germans  or  Poles,  by  race  or  by  tradition,  the 
bulk  of  the  people  is  Lithuanian,  White-Russian  (Bielorhss), 
Little-Russian  {Maloross),  not  to  mention  the  Jews  who,  gen- 
erally addicted  to  trade,  form  an  additional  class  and  nation- 
ality too.  It  is  easy  to  perceive  the  difficulties  of  such  a  state 
of  things  and  the  temptations  into  which  it  can  lead  those 
in  power. 


134      THE  EMPIRE  OF   THE   TSARS  AND    THE  RUSSIANS. 

In  order  to  check  the  historical  nationalities,  with  their  old- 
established  nobility  and  burgherdom,  which  still  hold  the  power 
by  virtue  of  wealth  and  education,  the  Russian  government  has 
been  induced  to  seek  the  support  of  the  petty  rural  and,  so  to 
speak,  "plebeian"  nationalities,*  until  quite  lately  unknown  to 
foreigners  and  scarcely  self-conscious.  To  the  Swede  of  Finland, 
to  the  German  of  lyiefland  or  Curland,  to  the  Pole  of  lyithuania 
or  Ukraina,  it  opposed  the  Finn,  the  Ehst,.the  I^ett,  the  Samog^t, 
the  White-  and  lyittle- Russian,  thus  making  use  for  its  own  ends 
of  ethnology  and  the  principle  of  nationality  and  turning  them 
against  its  adversaries,  re-kindling  national  feeling  in  populations 
in  whose  breasts  it  had  lain  extinct  for  ages,  with  the  mental  re- 
servation that  it  might  be  smothered  again  the  moment  it  showed 
inclination  to  encroach.  This  is  one  of  the  reasons  for  "peasant 
policy,"  called  by  some  democratic,  by  others  socialistic,  being 
adopted  more  than  once  by  the  tsars  towards  subject  provinces, 
more  especially  those  that  constituted  ancient  Poland.  Along  her 
western  frontiers  Russia  had  two  or  three  Irelands,  which  she  felt 
all  the  more  tempted  to  deal  with  on  the  principle  of  agrarian  law, 
as  the  landlords,  through  their  origin  or  tradition,  were  more 
obnoxious  to  her.  What  Alexander  II.  did  in  I^ithuania,  Podolia, 
even  in  Poland,  sundry  patriots  should  like  to  see  done  again  in 
the  Baltic  provinces,  at  the  cost  of  the  German  barons,  for  the 
benefit  of  the  I^ett  and  Ehst  peasantry.f 

At  a  time  when  conflicts  of  nationalities  and  class  jealousies 
breed  so  much  animosity,  it  is  easy  to  see  how  greatly  the  social 
status  would  be  endangered  by  a  policy  that  would  take  pleasure 

*  The  expression  belongs,  unless  I  am  mistaken,  to  Mr.  Dragomdnof,  in 
his  Historical  Poland. 

t  In  order  to  appreciate  the  conduct  of  the  Russian  government,  it  must 
not  be  forgotten  that,  at  the  time  of  the  emancipation,  the  whole  empire 
was  placed  under  agrarian  laws  more  or  less  favorable  to  the  quondam  serfs. 
The  Baltic  provinces  alone  were  exempted,  because  emancipation  had  taken 
place  there  under  Alexander  I.,  on  different  principles.  See  farther  on, 
Book  VI.,  Chapter.  II. 


RACES  AND  NATIONALITY.  1 35 

in  envenoming  and  doubling,  the  one  by  the  other,  two  of  the 
weightiest  incentives  to  antagonism  that  can  divide  those  that 
dwell  on  one  soil.  The  internal  difl&culties  under  which  Russia 
labors,  and  the  geographical  situation  of  the  provinces  exposed 
to  such  divisions,  would  render  such  a  game  very  dangerous  for 
the  empire.  Far  from  having  any  interest  in  nursing  the  passions 
of  the  various  races  subject  to  its  rule,  the  Russian  government 
would  find  it  to  its  advantage  to  get  them  to  live  peaceably 
together.  Having  once  taken  on  himself  the  character  of  pro- 
tector to  the  lowly  and  weak,  of  patron  to  long-enslaved  majori- 
ties, the  tsar  might  find  himself  called  upon  to  take  a  turn  at 
defending,  against  them,  powerful  minorities.  Nothing  could  be 
less  profitable  to  Russia  than  a  renewal,  directed  against  the 
Germans,  of  the  popular  riots  against  the  Jews,  or  the  perpetra- 
tion of  rural  wholesale  risings  against  the  Baltic  barons  of  I^ief- 
land  or  the  Polish  pans  (squires,  lords)  of  Lithuania  and  Podo- 
lia.  It  matters  greatly  to  the  empire  not  to  allow  racial  rivalries 
to  degenerate  into  class  strife,  so  as  to  oflfer  a  handle  to  revolu- 
tionary agitation  or  foreign  interference.  The  safest  course  for  a 
government  as  well  as  for  a  dynasty,  is  to  arbitrate  between  the 
different  nationalities  and  the  different  classes  without  sacrificing 
the  ones  to  the  others.  If  the  task  is  often  difficult  for  Russia 
in  those  of  her  provinces  that  adjoin  Europe  as  well  as  on  the 
confines  of  Asia,  this  difficulty  is  but  the  price  she  has  to  pay  for 
her  greatness. 

To  escape  paying  it,  Russia  would  have  to  give  up  the  annexa- 
tions of  the  last  two  centuries,  the  conquests  of  Alexander  I., 
Catherine  II.,  nay,  of  Peter  the  Great  himself.  If,  on  the  con- 
trary, she  wishes  to  strengthen  her  authority  over  the  various 
peoples  of  her  immense  domain,  her  best  course  is,  after  all,  to 
show  respect  of  their  nationality,  their  language,  their  religion, 
so  as  to  take  fi-om  them  all  incentives  to  discontent,  leaving  it  to 
time,  to  reason,  to  their  self-interest,  to  the  natural  attraction  of 
a  great  country,    to  bind  them  more  and  more  firmly  to  the 


136      THE  EMPIRE  OF  THE   TSARS  AND    THE  RUSSIANS. 

empire.*  Unfortunately  for  herself,  Russia  lacks  the  most  potent 
charm  of  all  in  the  eyes  of  modem  nations — lacks  the  magnet  most 
powerful  to  attract  them — lacks  liberty.  And  one  may,  without 
claiming  a  prophet's  gift,  venture  the  prediction,  that  only  on  that 
day  she  can  be  certain  of  keeping  all  her  European  borderlands — 
Ujy^uies — when  she  will  have  contrived  to  raise  them  to  the  same 
political  level  as  the  rest  of  Europe. 

The  Emperor  Alexander  III.  appears  to  have  set  himself  the 
task  of  russifying  Poland,  Lithuania,  and,  above  all,  the  Baltic 
provinces.  He  has  successively  introduced  in  the  Baltic  country 
Russian  administration  and  courts  of  justice,*  substituting  every- 
where— in  the  university,  the  schools,  the  mtmidpalities,  the 
courts,  Russian  to  German.f     Hofgericht,  Manngericht,  Land- 

<  That  is  what  Russia  has  always  done  and  is  doing  all  the  time,  following 
in  the  footsteps  of  Rome's  wise  statesmanship.  Not  many  chapters  back,  our 
author  praised  the  Russian  government  for  having  respected  the  autonomy 
and  self-government,  customs  and  laws,  of  the  annexed  Grand  Duchy  of 
Finland.  In  the  same  way  it  leaves  to  all  its  own  Russian  rural  populations 
their  communal  self-government,  based  on  custom-laws  of  immemorial  eld, 
easily  traceable,  many  of  them,  to  a  primeval  Aryan  social  status,  such  as 
is  revealed  to  us  by  the  Veda  and  later,  but  still  very  ancient,  Sanskrit  litera- 
ture. As  to  the  alien  subjects,  their  manners,  their  religions  are  not  less 
scrupulously  respected.  Thus  religious  teaching  is  an  integral  and  obliga- 
tory part  of  the  course  of  instruction  in  all  public  schools  of  every  grade. 
But  this  instruction  is  imparted  to  the  children  and  youths  in  their  respec- 
tive religions,  by  teachers  engaged  and  paid  by  the  State.  Should  there  be 
in  a  school  one  Hebrew  boy,  or  one  Mussulman,  there  will  be  a  Rabbi  or  a 
Mollah  to  teach  him  the  Thora  or  the  Koran,  and  he  will  not  be  required  to 
assist  at  the  Greek-Orthodox  catechism.  In  the  army  all  allowances  are 
made  for  Jewish  and  Moslem  soldiers,  that  are  compatible  with  service  and 
discipline,  in  the  matter  of  food,  religious  observances,  and  the  like.  In 
return  for  this  more  than  tolerance  the  state  surely  has  a  right  to  decree 
that  the  state  language  shall  be  used  in  public  schools,  courts  of  justice, 
and  government  offices,  understood  and  partiy  spoken  by  the  officials  of 
railway  companies  and  other  public  servants,  and  that  the  state  institutions 
shall  be  accepted  by  all  its  subjects.  Otherwise  where  would  be  the 
state? 

*  The  judicial  organization  of  the  empire  was  not  enforced  until  1890. 

t  There  are  exceptions,  especially  in  favor  of  the  rural  courts  where  it 
would  have  been  impossible  to  enforce  the  use  of  the  Russian  language  ; 
bat  the  exception  is  made  in  favor  of  the  local  languages,  Ehst  and  I^ett. 


RACES  AND  NATIONALITY.  I37 

gericht^  all  these  are  now  memories — ^no  more.*  It  is  to  be  feared 
that,  along  with  these  Gothic  institutions,  may  perish  the  self- 
government  which  was  the  pride  and  prosperity  of  the  three 
provinces.  Russification  is  everywhere  carried  on  to  the  benefit  of 
centralization.  There  lies  the  evil.  Possibly,  it  might  have  been 
to  the  imperial  government's  advantage  to  proceed  with  greater 
gentleness.  In  its  religious  policy  at  least,  it  would  have  shown 
greater  wisdom  by  acting  in  a  more  liberal  spirit.  It  is  not  by 
wounding  the  consciences  of  her  Catholic  or  Protestant  subjects, 
that  Russia  will  win  their  hearts.* 

*  Perfectly  right  and  proper.  Why  should  mediaeval  survivals,  denounced 
and  swept  away  through  all  Europe,  be  treasured  only  just  here  where  they 
do  infinite  harm  by  fostering  a  rebellious  and  aggressive  spirit,  and  per- 
petuating oligarchical  oppression  under  the  guise  of  a  self-government 
which  may  have  been  the  pride  and  prosperity,  not  of  the  three  provinces 
but  of  the  small  minority  of  aliens  that  rules  them,  much  against  the  feel- 
ing prevailing  among  the  native  population,  which  gravitates  steadily 
towards  the  Russian  element,  especially  as  represented  by  the  mild,  unob- 
trusive, uninterfering  Orthodox  Church.  Centralization  ?  Well,  no  social 
or  political  life  is  possible  without  some — without  much — of  it,  especially 
where  heterogeneous  elements  have  to  be  welded  together,  and  where 
decided  centrifugal  tendencies  have  to  be  counteracted.  Bven  in  a  repub- 
lican confederacy,  what  is  a  federal  government  with  its  one  executive 
bead  but  centralization?  And  as  to  gentle  and  gradual  means,  Germany 
in  like  cases  shows  herself  neither  so  lenient  nor  so  long-suffering ;  she 
makes  repression  unnecessary  by  at  once,  and  on  principle,  laying  on  her 
iron  hand,  without  the  velvet  glove,  and  leaving  no  room  for  unruliness. 
And  Germany  succeeds  and  is  approved  by  the  world. 

*  See  Vol.  III.,  Book  IV.,  Chap.  III. 


BOOK  III. 
THE  NATIONAL  TEMPERAMENT  AND  CHARACTBR. 


CHAPTER  I. 

Utility  and  Difficulty  of  Studying  the  National  Character — Russia  One  of 
the  Countries  Where  Material  Surroundings  Act  Most  on  Man — Some 
Effects  of  the  Climate — The  North,  and  Sluggishness  Brought  on  by 
Cold — Winter  and  the  Intermittence  of  I^abor — Lack  of  Liking  for 
Physical  Exertion — Habitual  InsuflBciency  of  Food  ;  Drunkenness  ; 
Hygiene  and  Mortality — Cold  and  Uncleanliness  at  Home  in  the  North 
— Are  Northern  Countries  More  Favorable  to  Morality? 

It  is  something  to  know  the  origin  of  a  people  and  the  land 
they  inhabit.  It  is  not  much  if  one  cannot  account  for  the  influ- 
ence of  nature  on  man.  From  this  action  of  the  outer  world 
and  from  the  people's  historical  or  religious  training  results  the 
national  character.  Now  nations  do  their  politics  as  private 
people  transact  their  business,  temperament  being  a  factor  as 
well  as  self-interest. 

For  the  character  of  a  nation,  like  that  of  a  man,  depends  on 
the  temperament  or  blood,  on  the  physical  surroundings  and  on 
the  moral  training,  not  to  mention  what,  in  an  individual  is  con- 
tributed by  age,  and,  in  a  nation,  by  a  long  course  of  civilization. 
Between  these  three  orders  of  influences — ^race,  nature,  history — 
now  one,  now  another,  has  been  awarded  pre-eminence  in  the 
study  of  nations.  All  three  have  their  importance ;  but,  nations 
being,  even  more  than  individuals,  of  mixed  blood,  what  is  most 
difficult  to  determine  is  the  share  to  be  allotted  to  race  and  hered- 

138 


THE  N^ATIONAL    TEMPERAMENT  AND   CHARACTER.       1 39 

ity.  In  Russia  itself  discussion  is  rife  about  the  character  of  the 
Great- Russian  :  what  distinguishes  him  from  the  western  Russian 
tribes,  what  must  be  credited  to  his  mixing  with  Finns  and 
Tatars,  what  to  his  own  settling  on  a  new  land.  Both  causes 
must  have  acted  concurrently ;  but  the  latter,  being  the  more  per- 
sistent, must  have  been  the  more  powerful.  Two  circumstances 
combined  to  lend  it  a  peculiar  stress.  It  is  one  of  the  effects  of 
civilization  to  neutralize  the  influences  of  clime  and  soil  by  lifting 
man  beyond  their  action.  In  Russia,  culture  being  of  more 
recent  date  and  therefore  going  less  deep,  the  bulk  of  the  people 
have  remained  nearer  to  nature,  more  submissive  to  her  sway. 
Moreover,  under  northern  skies,  the  domination  of  climate  is 
more  absolute,  its  yoke  more  difl&cult  to  shake  off.  The  Russian 
soil  is  no  pleasant  habitation,  fashioned  and  furnished  for  man 
by  nature's  kindly  hand  ;  it  must  be  conquered  with  armed  hand 
and  so  maintained.  How,  then,  in  such  a  country,  with  a  civili- 
zation not  as  yet  very  advanced,  should  not  nature  have  imprinted 
on  both  the  temperament  and  character  an  indelible  stamp  ?  Thus 
it  is  that,  in  dealing  with  Russian  character,  a  goodly  proportion 
of  defects  and  qualities  for  which  race,  history,  religion,  are 
usually  held  responsible,  should  be  credited  to  physical  nature. 

In  order  to  appreciate  how  much,  we  must  transfer  ourselves 
into  the  northern  half  of  modem  Russia,  the  region  which  has 
been  the  cradle  of  the  Great-Russian,  and  formed  the  nucleus  of 
ancient  Moscovia.  Owing  to  the  Tatar  raids,  this  region  lies 
entirely  north  of  the  50th  degree  of  northern  latitude.  There, 
besides  N6vgorod  and  Pskof,  the  two  semi-republican  cities, 
which  on  all  accounts  deserve  to  be  set  apart,  we  find  Tver,  Yaro- 
slavl, Kostrom^,  Vladimir,  Suzdal,  Riaz^ — all  the  ancient 
capitals  of  the  Russian  kniazes,^ — describing  a  sort  of  circle 
around  Moscow.  That  part  of  the  country  is  essentially  con- 
tinental, colder  than  Petersburgh,  with  greater  extremes  of 
climate,  where  the  average  winter  temperature  is  from  thirteen 
'  See  Appendix  to  this  Chapter,  No.  i. 


I40      THE  EMPIRE  OF  THE   TSARS  AND    THE  RUSSIANS, 

to  fourteen  degrees  below  that  of  Paris.  Setting  aside  Scandi- 
navia and  Scotland,  both  warmed  by  the  nearness  of  two  seas,  this 
is  the  only  region  of  both  hemispheres  that  has  a  sedentary,  agri- 
cultural population  in  such  close  proximity  to  the  Polar  Circle. 
At  so  great  a  distance  from  any  sea  and  from  the  equator,  it  is 
only  thanks  to  its  want  of  elevation  that  it  is  inhabitable  at  all. 

The  action  of  such  a  climate  on  the  life  and  body  of  man  must 
be  enormous.  One  feels  that,  but  it  is  hard  to  demonstrate.  Within 
a  century  or  two,  there  has  been  in  Europe  much  discoursing  on 
the  political  effects  of  climate  ;  there  are  few  subjects  that  recur 
more  often  and  on  which  we  know  less.  In  the  actual  state  of 
our  knowledge  we  cannot  even  determine  scientifically  the  direct 
effects  of  external  nattu'e  on  organism  and  temperament.  Montes- 
quieu was  the  first  to  attempt  a  political  theory  of  climates  ;  but 
this  experiment,  being  based  on  unreliable  narratives  of  travellers 
and  on  incomplete  observations,  was  premature.  Since  the  last 
century,  science,  which  has  shed  light  on  so  many  questions,  has 
had  scarcely  a  ray  to  spare  for  this  one. 

The  most  general  effect  of  cold  on  vegetal  or  animal  life  is 
to  produce  numbness,  sometimes  even  suspension  of  the  vital 
energies.  The  sap  stops  coursing  in  plants  ;  the  blood  coagulates 
in  the  veins  of  animals.  Many  of  the  latter  hibernate  in  a  state 
of  somnolence,  and,  during  the  very  coldest  months,  lie  down  in 
temporary  graves.  Man  escapes  this  deathlike  lethargy  by  force 
of  his  industry  and  civilization  as  much  as  by  his  constitution, 
but  cannot  entirely  withstand  the  sluggishness  which  is  so  general 
a  phenomenon  throughout  nature. 

Montesquieu  made  out  the  North  to  be  the  home  of  activity, 
courage,  liberty.  This  theory  may  be  correct  as  far  as  moderately 
cold  countries  are  meant ;  but  extreme  cold  in  the  North  produces 
effects  analogous  to  those  of  extreme  heat  in  the  South,  so  that 
in  tropical  countries  the  sleep  of  summer  siestas  during  the  hottest 
hours  or  seasons  corresponds  to  that  of  hibernation  in  polar  ones. 
Bracing  and  stimulating  for  lungs  and  general  activity,  as  long  as  it 


THE  NATIONAL    TEMPERAMENT  AND  CHARACTER.       14I 

keeps  within  certain  limits,  cold  becomes  depressing  as  soon  as  it 
reaches  too  low  a  degree,  or  lasts  too  long.  It  then  disposes  to  a 
certain  indolence,  physical  and  moral,  to  a  sort  of  passiveness  of 
mind  and  soul.  To  the  excitement  of  the  first  frosts  succeeds 
the  torpor  brought  on  by  intense  cold.  Winter  like  summer,  the 
North  like  the  South,  have  each  its  own  kind  of  sloth ;  fire  in  cold 
weather  exerts  the  same  influence  as  shade  in  hot  weather,  both 
equally  invite  to  dawdling  and  idleness.  The  mere  weight  of  the 
garments  is  oppressive,  their  length  is  in  the  way. 

With  all  this  the  North  has  a  great,  an  immense  advantage 
over  the  South.  If  cold  counsels  rest,  it  by  no  means  makes  it 
imperative  ;  action  is  one  of  the  remedies  against  it.  Instead  of 
reducing  man's  needs,  it  increases  them  and  thereby  incites  to 
work.  Moreover,  the  cold  is  rarely  unendurable  out-doors  in  the 
centre  of  Russia,  in  the  latitude  of  Moscow,  and  even  Petersburgh, 
or  severe  enough  to  compel  Russians  to  burrow,  like  the  Lapps 
and  Esquimaux,  in  their  huts.  When  the  air  is  calm — and  in 
very  severe  cold  it  generally  is — a  temperature  of  from  20°  to 
25°  below  freezing  point  is  quite  endurable,  10°  or  12°,  the 
average  temperature  of  the  coldest  months,  gives  very  fine, 
even  pleasant  weather,  very  favorable  to  out-door  exercise.  In 
those  latitudes  it  is  the  motion  of  the  air,  the  wind,  and  not 
the  degrees  of  temperature,  which  produces  the  sensation  of  cold 
and  makes  it  painftil. 

Winter  has  its  own  peculiar  tasks  as  it  has  its  pleasures.  In 
Russia  as  everywhere  else,  it  is  the  season  of  city  life,  society, 
festivities.  In  the  country  it  is  the  time  of  freight  carrying — a 
most  important  item  in  a  country  where  distances  are  such  a  draw- 
back. In  summer  the  peasant  has  roads  which  are  insufl&cient 
both  in  quality  and  quantity.  In  winter  frost  and  snow  construct 
splendid  roads  for  him,  and  traffic  is  at  once  enlivened.  The 
opening  of  sleighing  is  sometimes  delayed  by  scarcity  of  snow, 
and  that  is  a  calamity.  It  is  during  the  transition  weeks  between 
firost  and  thaw  in  spring  and  auttunn,  that  the  peasant  is  con- 


142       THE  EMPIRE   OF   THE    TSARS  AND    THE  RUSSIANS, 

dernned  to  in-door  life.  The  long  winter  leisure  created  in  the 
North  all  the  handicrafts  on  which  so  many  villages  subsist,  and 
which  in  their  turn  gave  rise  to  peddling  and  to  the  numerous 
fairs  where  the  products  of  rustic  industries  are  bartered.  It  is 
in  winter  that  the  girls  and  women  work  those  drawn-work  laces 
which  are  being  imitated  in  France,  and  those  red  and  blue  em- 
broidered tovfeis—polotintsa — the  designs  of  which  seem  in  great 
part  borrowed  from  the  symmetrical  flower  patterns  traced  by 
frost  on  the  window  panes.* 

There  is  in  the  North,  over  and  above  the  direct  action  of  cold 
on  the  organs,  one  thing  which  places  labor  under  conditions 
less  favorable  than  in  tempered  countries,  and  that  is  the  violent 
alternation  and  opposition  between  the  seasons.  If  we  find  it 
difl&cult  to  determine  the  physiological  effiects  of  climate,  we  per- 
ceive rather  more  clearly  some  of  its  economic  influences.  An 
English  historian,  Buckle,  has  noticed  that  nations  living  under 
high  latitudes  did  not  show  the  same  taste  for  labor,  the  same 
energ>',  as  those  living  under  gentler  skies.  He  attributes  this 
defect  to  the  interruption  enforced  by  winter,  which,  by  the 
rigor  of  its  weather  and  the  shortness  of  its  days,  breaks  every 
year,  for  months,  the  sequence  of  agricultural  pursuits.     "  Why 

'The  patterns  are  rather  architectural — /.  e.,  they  reproduce  the 
national  architectural  ornament-motives  in  sawed  woodwork.  Besides  that, 
they  conventionalize  every  possible  natural  object — trees,  flowers,  animals, 
birds — in  a  very  origfinal  and  consistent  manner,  which  gives  a  perfectly 
well  defined  and  individual  art  type.  The  standing  combination  of  such 
designs  is :  two  birds,  sometimes,  but  very  rarely,  quadrupeds, — facing 
each  other,  with  a  tree  or  plant  of  some  sort  between  them — precisely  after 
the  manner  of  the  Assyro-Babylonian  ornamental  art  and  its  derived 
branches.  The  women  have  of  course  no  patterns  to  work  from.  The 
designs  are  "stitched"  and  handed  down  through  generations,  from 
mother  to  daughter,  and  may  be,  nay  probably  are,  many  hundred  years  old. 
These  towel-embroideries — which  are  used  as  well,  only  much  wider,  for 
borders  of  table-cloths  and  bed-sheets,  for  aprons,  petticoats,  men's  shirts, 
etc. — are  the  most  venerable  and  authentic  documents  we  have  for  a  history 
of  national  art.  All  Slavic  nations  and  tribes  have  this  cunning,  but  the 
characters  of  the  designs,  the  stitches  and  the  combinations  of  color  vary 
according  to  country  or  even  province. 


THE  NATIONAL    TEMPERAMENT  AND   CHARACTER.       1 43 

sleepest  thou,  mujik  ?  ' '  says  a  popular  song,  in  whix:h  the  peas- 
ant is  reproved  for  sleeping  all  day  on  top  of  the  stove  while 
Want  comes  and  sits  down  at  his  door.  If  he  sleeps,  it  is 
because  his  crops  have  been  taken  in,  the  autumn  sowing  has 
been  attended  to,  and  the  snow  has  come,  so  there  is  no  more 
work  for  him  in  the  fields.*  This  intermittence  of  labor  causes 
a  certain  desultoriness  and  instability  which  interfere  with  con- 
sistency and  regular  habits.  The  North  throws  peculiar  obstacles 
in  the  way  of  agriculture  and  industry,  by  making  them  depend- 
ent on  a  climate  at  once  rugged  and  whimsical,  and  it  is  not 
impossible  that  these  failings  may  extend  to  the  character.  Here 
again,  should  not  nature  by  rights  be  held  responsible  for  some 
of  the  propensities  or  defects  usually  imputed  to  the  Slavic 
temperament  ? 

Foreigners  who  have  had  work  done  in  Russia  have  generally 
noticed  that  Russians,  like  southerners,  are  better  capable  of  a 
vigorous  spurt  of  energy  than  of  continuous  steady  eflfort.  With 
more  vivacity,  probably  an  inheritance  of  his  Slavic  blood,  the 
Russian  frequently  displays  less  activity  than  the  northerners  of 
Teutonic  race  ;  he  even  often  shows,  in  the  lower  as  well  as  in  the 

'  Accordingly  the  poet  does  not  rebuke  the  peasant  for  sleeping,  but  for 
sleeping  too  long,  for  being  caught  napping  by  Spring  who  is  at  the  door, 
as  the  second  line  explains.  The  author  of  this  pretty  poem  and  many 
more  short  pieces,  all  in  lyrical-idyllic  strain,  remarkable  for  the  sadly 
pensive,  pathetic  vein,  sometimes  deepening  to  passion,  which  runs 
through  them  like  a  rich  minor  harmony,  is  Koltsof,  often  called  the 
"Russian  Bums."  He  was  born  in  1809,  and  died  at  thirty-three — at  an 
age  when  achievement,  even  the  best,  is  still  promise.  He  belonged  by 
birth  to  a  lowly  class,  though  not  to  the  peasantry,  as  has  often  been 
averred  ;  his  father  traded  in  cattle,  and  he  worked  under  him.  In  the  midst 
of  uncongenial  surroundings  and  disapproving  relatives,  who  did  not  spare 
him  their  jeers,  and  taunts,  and  wise  saws,  he  faithfully  plied  the  humble " 
duties  to  which  he  was  called,  and  only  two  or  three  times,  business  trips 
in  his  father's  interests  gave  him  the  golden  opportunity  of  snatching 
glimpses  of  the  world  of  intellect,  of  literature  and  art,  the  world  to  which 
he  was  bom,  yet  where  he  never  could  be  but  a  passing  guest,  to  join 
hands  with  men  whose  peer  he  was,  yet  whose  society  was  not  for  him.  He 
was  patient,  dutiful,  profoundly  unhappy — and  died. 


144      ^^^  EMPIRE  OF  THE    TSARS  AND    THE  RUSSIANS. 

higher  classes,  less  taste  for  bodily  exercise.  He  appears  to  like  it 
only  in  the  shape  of  fast  sleighing  and  driving,  and  that  to  an 
extent  at  which  foreigners  are  amazed,  and  which  may  probably 
be  accounted  for  by  the  long  distances  and  the  cold,  which  make 
it  desirable  to  get  to  one's  destination  as  quickly  as  possible,  and 
thus  a  certain  hastiness  becomes  a  habit.  Bodily  exercise,  violent 
games,  sport  and  athletics  in  all  their  forms,  do  not  seem  more 
attractive  to  these  sons  of  the  North  than  to  the  modem  nations  of 
the  South.  Even  skating  is  less  in  favor  than  in  countries  where 
it  is  not  so  easily  to  be  had.  In  this  respect  as  in  so  many  others, 
the  Russian  may  be  said  to  be  the  very  antipodes  of  the  English- 
man. Travellers  have  often  been  struck  by  the  disinclination  of 
Russian  peasants  to  physical  exertion  ;  at  their  numerous  festivals 
their  chief  delight  appears  to  be  rest  and  immobility.  Their  fav- 
orite pastime  is  swinging ;  nor  do  they  boldly  launch  into  space 
as  Western  children  do,  but  are  content  with  a  soft,  swaying 
motion.*  Their  habitual  dances,  such  as  the  khorovdd,  a  sort  of 
chaunted  dance  in  a  circle,  apparently  originating  in  old  heathen 
rites,  are  slow  and  monotonously  indolent.  Climate  and  race  may 
have  something  to  do  with  this  impassive  laziness  of  mind  and 
body  ;  the  people's  diet  is  also  in  g^eat  part  responsible  for  it. 

The  principal  physiological  ejffect  of  cold  is  to  activate  respira- 
tion, to  determine  in  lungs  and  blood  a  more  rapid  combustion 
and,  as  a  consequence,  to  demand  more  substantial  nourishment. 

*  I  cannot  imagine  what  could  give  Mr.  Beaulieu  this  entirely  mistaken 
impression.  The  passion  for  swinging  with  dizzy  recklessness  is  character- 
istic of  Russians  of  all  classes,  and  not  of  children  and  very  young  people 
alone,  for  swinging  is  the  national  amusement  par  excellence.  The  slow 
"  chorus-dance"  mentioned  in  the  next  line  (a  gentle  swa3nng  of  a  circle  of 
maidens  and  women,  holding  hands,  performed  to  their  own  singing)  and  the 
beautiful  national  attitude-dance  too  have  their  counterpart  in  the  wildly 
delirious  solo  steps  executed  by  men  alone.  One  invariably  follows  and 
completes  the  other.  This  character  of  our  national  dancing  was  appropri- 
ated and  intensified  in  their  world-renowned  csardal  by  the  Hungarians, 
whose  culture-life,  with  much  of  their  vocabulary,  came  to  them  from  the 
Slavs,  with  whom  they  mixed  for  centuries  before  German  influences  began 
to  make  themselves  felt 


THE  NATIONAL    TEMPERAMENT  AND  CHARACTER.       145 

The  nearer  we  are  to  the  pole,  the  more  man  needs  food  rich  in 
carbon  and  azote,  animal  food.  Now  in  the  extreme  north,  as  an 
effect  of  the  cold  itself,  the  fertility  of  the  soil  is  rarely  in  propor- 
tion with  the  demands  of  the  climate.  This  is  nowhere  more 
obvious  than  in  the  northern  half  of  Russia,  unfavorable  to  the 
growth  of  wheat,  and  beset  by  such  obstacles  to  cattle  raising  as 
are  unknown  to  temperate  climes.  Throughout  this  region  the 
earth  is  niggardly  in  granting  to  man  the  food  indicated  by  heaven 
itself :  such  a  lack  of  balance  between  needs  and  supplies  has  very 
disastrously  reacted  on  the  temperament  of  the  people  ;  they  have 
through  many  centuries  been  condemned  to  meagre,  almost 
entirely  vegetable  fare.  Under  a  Northern  sky  they  have  lived 
as  people  do  in  the  South.  The'  use  of  meat,  bacon,  of  salt  pork 
even,  is  only  now  beginning  to  gain  ground  amongst  them. 
Although  great  progress  has  been  made  in  this  direction  since 
the  emancipation,  the  majority  of  peasants  even  yet  taste  meat 
only  on  holidays.  Their  staple  food  consists  of  rye  bread,  broken 
into  the  shtshi,  a  sort  of  soup  made  of  fermented  sour  cabbage 
— this  latter  dish  being  the  national  one  par  excellence.*  To  these 
edibles  are  added  dried  mushrooms  and  frozen  or  salted  fish — two 
articles  of  food  that  are  nowhere  consumed  in  such  quantities  as 
in  Russia.  A  religion  imported  from  the  South,  with  four  lents 
and  several  oriental  fasts,  the  strictness  of  which  has  been  proof 
against  centuries,  increased  the  evil  inflicted  by  nature. '  However, 
the  demands  of  the  climate  could  not  be  entirely  eluded,  and — 
drink  had  to  supply  the  lack  of  food. 

The  Russians  have  two  national  beverages :  kvass,  a  sort  of 
rye  water,  slightly  fermented  ;  and  tea,  the  use  of  which  is  well- 
nigh  as  universal  as  in  China.*  The  tea-kettle — the  brass  samovar, 

'  See  Appendix  to  this  Chapter,  No.  2. 

•  See  Appendix  to  this  Chapter,  No.  3. 

*  To  judge  by  the  Russian  name,  tchay  (which  is  a  Chinese  word, 
icha,  as  is,  at  the  other  end  of  Europe  the  Portuguese  cha),  the  Russians 
had  tea  directly  from  China.  There  are  in  Russia  two  more  beverages  in 
use  among  the  people  ;  one,  called  miod  (honey),  is  mead  or  the  hydromel 


146      THE  EMPIRE   OF   THE    TSARS  AND   THE  RUSSIANS. 

is  always  tlie  first  and  chief  utensil  of  a  household  ;  no  hut,  be  it 
ever  so  poor,  is  without  it.  Tea,  especially  in  a  country  where 
the  water  is  frequently  of  poor  quality,  is  a  great  help,  but, 
under  such  a  sky,  it  is  insufl&cient  as  a  tonic.  It  is  supplemented 
by  grain  whiskey,  the  pale,  white  vodka.''  It  has  long  been 
noticed  that  drunkenness  increases  along  with  the  degrees  of  lati- 
tude. The  taste  for  alcohol  is  as  natural  to  the  Russian  peasant 
as  temperance  is  to  the  SiciHan  or  Andalusian :  it  is  not  so  much 
the  man's  vice  as  the  climate's  fault.  As  long  as  the  fare  is  not 
better,  whiskey  will  be  to  the  peasant  a  tonic  and  stimulant,  un- 
wholesome, but  difl&cult  to  find  a  substitute  for.  What  is  most 
to  be  deplored  is,  not  that  it  cannot  be  proscribed  entirely,  but 
that  it  is  impossible  to  regulate  the  use  of  it,  so  that  on  a  "  spree 
day ' '  one  inevitably  beholds  the  absorption  (for  they  do  not 
drink  liquor,  they  gulp  it  down) — of  such  quantities  of  vodka  as, 
wisely  dealt  out,  would  further  the  peasant's  health  instead  of 
helping  to  degrade  him  into  a  brute. 

In  point  of  fact,  the  intemperance  of  the  Tsar's  subjects  has 
been  greatly  exaggerated.  The  Russian  drinks  less  than  the 
Dane,  perhaps  less  than  the  Englishman,  the  German,  the 
Frenchman.*    Many  peasants  who  get  dnink  on  every  holiday, 

so  much  in  favor  with  barbarians  ;  the  other  is  beer — which,  judging  from 
the  etymology  of  the  name  it  bears  both  in  Russian  and  Polish — {pivo,  from 
piti,  "to  drink,")  must  have  been  known  to  the  Slavs  in  remote  antiquity. 
Beer  is  also  called,  only  by  the  people,  when  they  prepare  it  themselves, 
Brhga, — the  identical  name  of  the  Scandinavian,  or  rather  Northern  and 
Teutonic,  god  of  feast-drinking  with  its  exalted  exhilaration  and  the  obli- 
gatory post-prandial  bragging  which  is  a  distinctive  feature  of  all  archaic 
Aryan  mythical  and  epical  hero  life. 

''  Vodka  is  the  diminutive  of  vodi,  "  water" — a  contemptuous  diminutive. 

*  What  a  relief  to  find  one  man — of  those  who  know  and  whose  words 
have  weight — find  out  and  proclaim  this  fact,  and  lift  from  the  Russian  peas- 
ant this  unthinking,  cruel  charge,  doubly' cruel  because  there  seems  to  lurk 
in  it  a  mockery  !  Of  course  he  drinks  less  than  his  neighbors,  because,  poor 
thing,  he  is  so  much  poorer.  Only  when  he  drinks,  which  he  cannot  afford 
very  often,  he  is  very  drunk,  and  the  worst  is  they  usually  get  drunk  all  to- 
gether, which  makes  it  conspicuous.  The  evil  is  much  greater  in  the  towns, 
among  the  artisans  and  especially  among  the  factory  people,  where  there  is 


THE  NATIONAL    TEMPERAMENT  AND   CHARACTER.       147 

go  for  weeks  without  a  drop  of  spirits.  Moreover,  the  consump- 
tion had  noticeably  diminished  during  the  second  half  of  Alex- 
ander II.' s  reign,  doubtless  owing  to  the  rise  in  the  taxes,  and 
also  perhaps  to  the  moral  upraising  of  the  former  serfs.*  Not- 
withstanding this  progress,  drunkenness,  with  all  its  attendant 
vices  and  evils,  remains  one  of  the  plague-spots  of  rural  life. 

As  a  rule,  the  villages  thrive  in  opposite  ratio  to  the  number 
of  kabhks,  i.  e. ,  taverns  or  tap-rooms ;  therefore  both  public  func- 
tionaries and  private  persons  strive  to  reduce  that  number.  The 
peasants  are  not  always  deaf  to  the  preachings  of  the  apostles  of 
temperance.  Certain  communes  forbid  the  opening  of  any  tavern 
whatever  on  their  territory,  and  when  Alexander  II.  was  mur- 
dered, several  villages  are  known  to  have  closed  their  kabhks,  in 
token  of  mourning  for  the  "  lyiberator."  In  former  times  such 
doings  would  not  have  been  viewed  favorably  by  the  administra- 
tion, from  the  fear  of  letting  the  most  bountiful  source  of  revenue 
run  dry.  Indeed  the  tax  on  the  national  vice  brings  in  every 
year  over  two  hundred  and  fifty  million  roubles,  in  other  words, 
nigh  on  one  quarter  of  the  entire  income  of  the  exchequer,  so  that 
the  wag  who  said  that  Russia  paid  her  debts  by  getting  drunk  was 

always  a  little  money  on  hand.  But  where  the  eflfects  are  most  deadly  is 
in  the  upper  classes,  where  the  spirit  fiend  so  frequently  gets  holds  of  the 
choicest,  most  gifted  individuals,  especially  among  writers  and  artists,  who 
can  afford  to  satisfy  its  insatiable  demands  in  the  present,  even  though  at  the 
cost  of  financial  ruin  in  the  end.  To  explain  why  this  should  be  so,  why 
the  most  fatally  doomed  should  be  preferably  among  the  noblest  and  best, 
the  salt  of  the  land,  would  take  us  into  such  hidden  and  dark  depths  of 
national  life  and  misery,  both  material  and  psychical,  as  would  require  a  book 
by  itself  to  explore.  The  deadly  flatness  and  ennui  of  provincial  life,  and, 
for  the  army,  of  garrison  life  in  the  interior  and  on  the  far  outskirts  of  the 
empire,  suck  into  perdition  thousands  more  of  a  race  among  whose  qualities 
self-discipline  and  firmness  of  character  are  not  the  most  prominent. 

*  From  1863  to  1879  the  consumption  had  decreased  7  per  cent,  notwith- 
standing the  increase  of  the  population.  The  number  of  tap-rooms  had 
gone  down  still  more  rapidly;  from  257,000  (1863)  to  139,000  (1875);  true,  it 
rose  again  to  146,000  (1881).  For  so  vast  an  empire,  even  this  is  a  very  low 
figure.  (See  Mme.  O.  Novikof 's  paper.  The  Temperance  Movement  in 
Russia,  in  the  Nineteenth  Century  for  September,  1882.) 


148      THE  EMPIRE  OF   THE    TSARS  AND    THE  RUSSIANS. 

not  so  very  far  wrong.  It  was  calculated,  in  1882,  that  the  nation 
spent  half  a  milliard  roubles  yearly  on  whiskey,  the  real  value 
of  which  amounted  to  not  over  fifty  millions,  the  margin  being 
divided  between  the  liquor  sellers  and  the  government.  Yet  in 
these  latter  days  the  government,  even  while  it  is  the  party  most 
interested  in  the  sale  of  vodka,  has  spared  no  efforts  to  free  the 
peasant  from  the  bondage  of  drunkenness.  One  of  the  first  acts 
of  Alexander  III.  was  the  convocation  of  a  sort  of  temperance 
parliament,  the  sessions  of  which  kept  Russia  and  the  peasantry 
much  interested  up  to  the  autumn  of  1881. 

The  sorry  hygienic  conditions  react  on  the  economical  condi- 
tions. The  poorness  of  the  fare  lowers  the  peasant's  capacity  for 
work,  and  destroys,  together  with  the  necessary  vitality,  the  taste 
and  need  for  labor.  Accustomed  to  his  meagre  pittance,  he  ends 
by  being  content  with  it.  Like  the  Southerners,  he  often  allows 
his  indolence  to  benefit  by  his  frugal  habit  of  life. 

Such  a  diet,  in  such  a  climate,  cannot  fail  to  exert  a  deplorable 
influence  on  health  and  even  on  the  duration  of  life.  The  effects  are 
apparent  in  the  statistics  of  the  country.  We  here  meet  with  two 
extremes, — another  of  those  anomalies  which  have  led  us  to  set  up 
contrast  as  the  law  of  Russia.  This  is  one  of  the  countries  where 
mortality  is  highest,  the  average  of  life  shortest ;  it  is  also  one  of 
those  where  we  find  the  most  numerous  cases  of  longevity,  where 
human  life  attains  its  uttermost  limits.  This  opposition  is  espe- 
cially striking  in  the  northern  regions.  Thus,  in  the  government 
of  Novgorod,  out  of  a  population  of  one  million  souls,  there  died  in 
one  year  (1871),  thirty-nine  persons  a  hundred  years  old  or  more, 
a  fact  which  presupposes  the  existence  of  others  of  the  same  age.* 
Side  by  side  with  this  phenomenon,  the  number  of  persons  who 
have  passed  their  thirty-fifth  year  is,  in  all  Russia,  proportionately 
lower  than  in  France,  while  those  having  passed  their  sixtieth 

*  In  1878  the  Procurator  of  the  Holy  Synod,  in  his  report  for  1875,  gave 
362  as  the  number  of  all  the  centenarians  deceased  in  that  year  in  the  Ortho- 
dox population. 


THE  NATIONAL    TEMPERAMENT  AND   CHARACTER.       I49 

year  are  only  half  as  numerous — not  fifty  in  a  thousand,  to  a 
hundred  and  over,  in  France.* 

It  is  especially  the  children  on  whom  mortality  descends. 
Under  such  a  sky,  the  apprenticeship  to  life  is  harder,  the  child 
needs  more  care,  and  the  care  is  not  so  easy  to  give.  It  suffers 
from  the  difficulty  of  breathing  the  air,  from  that  of  artificial 
nursing  ;  it  suffers  even  from  the  distances  which,  during  the 
working  season,  compel  the  mother  to  leave  it  untended  for  many 
long  hours.  Delicate  infants  are  doomed  ;  only  the  stronger  ones 
survive,  to  be  subjected  to  an  ordeal  which,  every  year,  is  fatal 
to  many.  They  undergo,  at  the  hand  of  death,  a  series  of  sitt- 
ings which  successively  eliminates  the  weaklings,  until  only  the 
robust  are  left,  for  life  and  reproduction. 

It  would  seem  as  though,  in  a  population  subjected  to  this  kind 
of  continuous  selection,  a  vigorous  temperament  should  be  a  com- 
mon thing.  Unfortunately  it  is  far  from  always  being  the  case.  In 
this  country  of  high  statures  and  frequent  longevity,  where  men 
six  feet  high  live  to  a  hundred,  strength  is  more  frequently  appar- 
ent than  real.  The  climate,  which  in  a  few  years  corrodes  granite, 
is,  in  the  long  run,  exceedingly  depressing,  debilitating.  The 
lymphatic  temperament  prevails  in  Russia.  Scrofula  is  habitual, 
contagious  diseases  are  common,  easy  to  take  and  difficult  to  cure. 
What  is  most  to  be  dreaded  is  not  severe  frost,  nor  even  the  great 
contrast  between  the  rigor  of  winter  and  the  blazing  heat  of 
summer ;  it  is  the  intermediary  seasons,  with  their  long  alterna- 
tives of  frost  and  thaw,  lasting  sometimes  for  months,  with 
abrupt  variations  of  temperature,  the  difference  amounting  to  as 
many  as  20°.  In  these  oppositions,  in  this  instability  of  the 
climate,  all  diseases,  all  epidemics  find  favorable  conditions, 
intensified,  too,  by  insufficient  nourishment.  Owing  to  greater 
drjnaess  of  the  atmosphere,  at  least  in  the  centre  and  east,  lung 

*  In  the  northern  governments,  the  proportion  is  greater,  reaching  sixty- 
three  to  the  thousand,  while  in  some  of  the  southern  ones,  as  in  that  of  Kief, 
it  descends  under  thirty. 


ISO      THE  EMPIRE   OF   THE    TSARS  AND    THE  RUSSIANS. 

diseases  are  less  prevalent  than  they  are  in  England.  In  com- 
pensation, however,  smallpox,  typhoid  fevers,  puerperal  fevers, 
diphtheria,  and  many  more,  break  out  periodically  amidst  the 
ill-fed,  ill-sheltered  populations,  and  their  ravages  are  terrible.* 

If  the  higher  classes  have  a  diet  more  in  accordance  with  the 
latitude,  their  mode  of  life  frequently  robs  them  of  the  benefit 
they  should  derive  from  it.  Nowhere  else  is  the  natural  order 
of  waking  and  sleep  inverted  to  such  an  extent ;  nowhere  else 
is  night  so  universally  turned  into  day.  That  also  may  be  an 
indirect  eflfect  of  the  climate,  which,  in  the  North,  suppresses  by 
turns  both  day  and  night,  or  exaggerates  beyond  measure  the  one 
at  the  expense  of  the  other. 

To  the  debilitating  influence  of  the  climate  are  added  habits 
tending  to  intensify  the  nervous  sensibilities.  The  very  precau- 
tions to  which  the  cold  compels  are  unhealthy.  To  resist  the 
winter,  people  must  live  in  a  heavy,  thick  atmosphere  of  vitiated 
air,  rarely  renewed  :  to  protect  themselves  against  excessive  cold, 
they  must  accumulate  beforehand  a  reserve  fund  of  warmth,  and 
fabricate  in  the  house,  with  the  help  of  fires  and  stoves,  an  arti- 
ficial climate  almost  as  hot  as  summer  in  the  south  of  Europe. 

*  For  the  greater  part  of  the  popalation  who  include  meat  into  their 
habitual  diet,  this  article  of  food  may  have  lost  some  of  it  properties  in 
consequence  of  the  proceeding  used  in  preserving  it  The  meat  and  fish 
needed  through  the  season  are  allowed  to  freeze  hard  in  the  beginning  of 
the  winter.  This  singularly  facilitates  transport  and  provisioning  ;  but  it 
is  just  possible  that  such  meat,  thawed  before  cooking,  may  be  less  whole- 
some than  fresh  meat.* 

•  This  evil  is  really  not  as  great  as  it  would  seem.  When  properly  treated 
just  before  cooking,  the  meats  and  certain  large  fish,  fresh  and  salt,  do  not 
perceptibly  lose  in  flavor  smd  nutritiveness,  and  as  to  game  and  venison,  we 
almost  never  get  it  any  other  way  in  large  cities  in  winter.  For  long  winter 
journeys  in  the  north,  where  travellers  would  go  hungry  but  for  the  provi- 
sions they  carry,  certain  articles  of  food  containing  minced  meat  are 
cooked,  then  frozen,  and  packed  into  boxes.  As  much  as  is  required  for 
a  meal  is  thawed,  seasoned,  and  warmed  at  the  stopping-places.  The  plan 
works  admirably.  The  greatest  inconvenience  of  the  frozen-meat  system 
is  that  it  gives  facilities  to  unprincipled  dealers  for  disposing  of  wholesale 
quantities  of  tainted  meat,  and  the  fraud  is  discovered  only  in  the  pur- 
chaser's kitchen.  The  police  have  much  to  do  to  watch  the  winter  markets 
on  account  of  this  abuse. 


THE  NATIONAL    TEMPERAMENT  AND   CHARACTER.       Ijl 

Tbe  lower  the  temperature  out-doors,  the  higher  it  must  rise 
in-doors.  Behind  their  double  windows,  calked  with  oakum  and 
putty  for  the  entire  season,  city  folks  convert  their  apartments 
into  hothouses,  where  they  breathe  the  same  air  as  the  tropical 
plants  with  which  they  love  to  decorate  their  dwellings.  In  his 
log  cabin — izbh, — frequently  surrounded  with  a  rampart  of  manure, 
the  peasant  and  his  whole  family  crowd  around  the  huge  oven, 
on  top  of  which  they  all  sleep  at  night.  Out  of  this  enervating 
atmosphere  people  must,  every  day,  emerge  into  the  icy  out-door 
air ;  after  laying  up  a  supply  of  warmth  for  the  blood  and  limbs, 
a  supply  of  air  must  be  taken  into  the  lungs.  And  so  they  go 
continually,  during  several  months,  back  and  forth,  from  house 
to  street,  the  difference  between  the  two  temperatures  oscillating 
between  40°  and  50°, — ^which  is  the  same  as  though  one  were  to 
pass  several  times  in  the  same  day  from  a  southern  summer  to  a 
northern  winter,  from  the  shores  of  the  Red  to  those  of  the 
White  Sea. 

The  climate  is  hardly  more  favorable  to  cleanliness  than  to 
health.  The  houses,  every  chink  of  which  is  hermetically  stuffed 
up  against  the  winter,  are  difficult  to  keep  clean.  The  stoves,  the 
only  agents  of  heating,  cannot  purify  the  air  of  the  rooms  into 
which  they  do  not  open.  Wealthy  or  well-to-do  families  remedy 
this  inconvenience  by  the  size  of  the  apartments,  which  open  into 
one  another  and  are  kept  in  constant  free  communication,  with 
frequent  burning  of  perfumes.  The  peasant  is  condemned  to  live 
in  a  stifling  atmosphere  redolent  with  miasms.  The  warm  and 
infected  air  of  his  cabin  hatches  out  myriads  of  insects  ;  it  teems 
with  all  kinds  of  vermin.  Out-doors,  the  filth  thrown  out  all 
around  the  house  vanishes  in  the  snow  to  reappear  with  unim- 
paired fetidity  in  spring.  Even  in  the  cities  the  refuse  is  not 
always  carried  away  by  the  sewers,  as  these  are  often  shut  off  by 
ice ;  rendered  harmless  by  frost,  it  keeps,  and  on  the  first  warm 
days,  fills  the  streets  with  pernicious  exhalations.  Nothing  can 
equal  the  stench  of  a  Russian  thaw  in  the  cities.    The  snow  which, 


152      THE  EMPIRE  OF   THE    TSARS  AND    THE  RUSSIANS. 

under  the  sleighs'  runners,  was  like  sand  or  pounded  glass,  is 
transformed  into  a  thick,  nauseous  slush,  which  pedestrians  bring 
into  the  houses  on  their  feet."  Under  such  sanitary  conditions, 
is  it  to  be  wondered  at  that  the  people  fall  an  easy  prey  to  every 
epidemic,  and  that  even  the  plague  itself  still  occasionally  puts 
in  an  appearance  in  European  Russia  ?  * 

The  necessity  of  keeping  the  body  well  covered  is  in  itself, 
for  the  people,  an  obstacle  to  cleanliness  as  well  as  to  hygiene. 
The  peasant  sleeps  in  his  clothes,  and  lives  night  and  day  in  the 
same  sheepskin — tulhp.  True,  he  takes  a  vapor  bath  once  a 
week,  on  Saturdays,  the  Sabbath  eve,  as  an  act  of  ritualistic  puri- 
fication. Unfortunately,  he  is  compelled  to  get  into  the  same 
clothes,  teeming  as  they  are  with  vermin.  In  winter  he  rarely 
takes  them  oflf  on  any  other  day,  the  only  one,  too,  on  which  he 
changes  his  underwear,  when  he  has  some ;  ofttimes,  when  he 
owns  no  change,  he  washes  his  shirt  after  his  bath,  before  putting 
it  on  again.  Every  village  has  its  vapor  bathhouse, — wretched 
wooden  hovels,  where  vapor  is  generated  by  pouring  water  on  a 
hot  stone  hearth  ;  a  few  inclined  boards  are  used  as  couches  by  the 
bathers ;  handfuls  of  shredded  bark  or  linden  rods  take  the  place 
of  sponges  and  washing-gloves.  Whether  it  came  down  from  the 
Greeks,  the  ancient  Slavs,  or  the  Finns, f  this  custom  is  perhaps 
more  conducive  to  health  than  even  to  cleanliness.  The  vapor 
bath,  often  followed  by  an  immersion  into  snow  or  ice-water,  is  a 
violent  stimulant  under  a  debilitating  climate ;  the  only  one, 
besides  alcohol,  within  the  mujik's  means  ;  they  are  to  him  an 

"*  See  Appendix  to  this  Chapter,  No.  4. 

♦  The  contact  with  Asia  is,  in  this  respect,  a  great  danger  ;  that  is  why 
the  plague  is  so  often  reported  in  the  Russian  annals.  That  which  raged 
in  the  government  of  Astrakhan,  in  1879,  was  probably  imported  from 
Turkish  Asia  in  consequence  of  the  Armenian  campaign.  It  performed 
one  good  office  anyhow,  by  drawing  the  attention  of  the  government  and 
the  local  authorities  to  the  badness  of  popular  hygiene. 

t  Vapor  baths  are  still  in  general  use  among  the  Finns  of  Finland, 
where  they  appear  to  have  been  handed  down  from  remote  antiquity.  They 
are  frequently  mentioned  in  the  Kalevala.    See,  f.  ex..  Rune  iv.  and  1. 


THE  NATIONAL    TEMPERAMENT  AND   CHARACTER.       153 

equivalent  of  the  mineral  waters  to  which,  and  for   the   same 
reasons,  the  Russians  of  the  higher  classes  are  so  partial. ' 

Public  opinion,  which  credits  northern  countries  with  a  higher 
degree  of  morality,  is  not  always  more  correct  in  this  than  when 
it  ascribes  to  them  greater  cleanliness.  In  Russia  the  climate  does 
not  favor,  if  not  morality,  at  least  refinement.  True,  the  great 
number  and  precocity  of  marriages  diminish  the  number  of  natural 
children  ;  this  however,  is  an  unreliable  gauge  to  measure  popular 
virtue  by.  It  is  to  be  noted  that  in  Russia,  from  various  causes, 
the  illegitimate  births  are  much  more  numerous  in  the  north  than 
in  the  south,  although  the  former  counts  fewer  cities.*  The  winter 
redusion,  the  long  nights,  the  crowding  of  the  family  within  one 
room,  around  one  hearth,  the  sleep  in  common  on  top  of  the  broad 
stove  that  serves  as  bed  to  the  entire  household — all  these  condi- 
tions are  not  exactly  conducive  to  the  sanctity  of  domestic  life. 
Dreadful  abuses  frequently  resulted  therefrom  in  the  times,  quite 
recent  still,  when  several  families  dwelt  together  under  the  roof  of 
the  family-chief.  The  custom  of  bathing  in  common,  even  though 
the  sexes  are  kept  strictly  separate,  so  that  none  of  those  scenes 
come  to  pass  for  which  travellers  formerly  used  to  reprove  them,t — 
this  most  wholesome  custom  may  have  tended  to  entertain  in  the 
peasant  a  certain  coarseness.  With  both  sexes  decency  seems  less 
strict  than  in  the  West,  modesty  is  less  easily  alarmed,  both  men 
and  women  appear  to  take  less  thought  of  their  nudity.  In  summer, 

"  See  Appendix  to  this  Chapter,  No.  5. 

*  One  cause  of  the  greater  proportion  of  natural  children  in  the  north 
is  the  absence  of  so  many  of  the  men,  who  go  towards  the  centre  in  search 
of  work,  leaving  the  female  population  greatly  in  excess  of  the  male.  The 
average  rate  of  illegitimate  births  in  Russia  is  about  three  per  cent.,  one 
of  the  lowest  figures  in  Europe,  outside  of  Greece.'* 

f  For  instance  the  Abb6  Chappe  d'Auteroche,  to  whom  Catherine  11. 
took  the  trouble  of  replying  herself  in  her  Antidote. 

'*  Matters  of  course  were  a  great  deal  worse  in  the  times  of  Emperor 
Nicolas,  when  a  man  could  be  taken  from  his  family  to  be  sent  away  as 
soldier,  for  a  term  of  service  never  under  twenty  years.  The  young  wife's 
utter  helplessness  under  these  unnatural  conditions  could  not  but  produce 
great  leniency  in  the  local  public  opinion. 


154      THE  EMPIRE   OF   THE    TSARS  AND    THE  RUSSIANS. 

the  traveller  is  often  shocked  in  this  respect.  Along  the  rivers,  in 
the  towns  and  villages  on  the  Don  and  the  Volga  more  particularly, 
it  is  not  unusual,  especially  on  Saturdays,  the  day  set  apart  for 
ablutions  by  custom  and  religion,  to  see  girls  and  women,  with  no 
garment  of  any  kind,  disport  themselves  in  troops  in  scarcely 
sheltered  spots,  sometimes  even  under  the  most  frequented  bridges. 
If,  as  people  say,  temperaments  are  colder  and  the  senses  blunter 
in  the  North,  there  is,  as  a  set-off,  less  delicacy  in  feelings  and 
sensations. 


APPENDIX  TO  BOOK  IIL,  CHAPTER  I.— NO.  i.     (See  p.  139,  note  i.) 

The  title  kniaz  (sound  the  A  strongly)  is  usually  rendered  "Prince," 
which  is  terribly  misleading,  but  probably  not  to  be  helped.  The  only 
proper  way  would  be  to  use  original  national  titles  without  translating  them. 
But  all  nations  object  to  that,  and  so  the  Anglo-Saxon  "  Earl "  has  become 
"  Graf"  in  the  Teutonic  languages,  and  "  Count "  in  the  Latin  ones.  Histori- 
cally the  kniaz  was  the  sovereign  of  a  given  domain,  or  principality.  The 
first  known  kniazes  were  Rurik  and  his  immediate  descendants.  At  first 
they  were  few,  and  the  domains,  continually  enlarged  by  conquest,  exten- 
sive, so  there  was  great  power  and  real  royalty  attached  to  the  title.  But 
the  families  multiplied,  and  as  no  privilege  belonged  to  primogeniture  in 
the  matter  of  landholding,  the  domains,  which  were  treated  as  private  pos- 
sessions, —  the  state-idea  being  embodied  only  in  the  various  kniazes'  alle- 
giance to  the  head  of  the  family,  the  "  Grand-Kniaz"  (commonly  translated 
"  Grand-Duke),  who  resided  in  Kief,  —  were  parcelled  and  re-parcelled  out 
to  provide  for  all  the  young  kniazes  bom  into  Rurik's  house,  just  as  com- 
munal lands  in  our  day  are  re-distributed  to  meet  the  needs  of  a  village 
community.  So  there  came  to  be  a  very  multitude  of  kniazes,  with  ever 
decreasing  power  and  territories  ;  moreover,  habitually  and  hereditarily  at 
daggers  drawn  with  one  another.  These  two  hundred  years  —  eleventh  to 
thirteenth  centuries — are  the  "dark  ages"  of  our  history,  and  it  is  im- 
possible to  say  to  what  depth  of  degradation  and  even  penury  the  House  of 
Rurik  might  have  sunk,  had  not  the  Tatars  come,  and,  in  a  certain  sense, 
wiped  out  the  past  and  made  of  the  future  a  tabula  rasa,  on  which  the 
kniazes  of  Moscow,  risen  from  obscurity,  in  obscurity  and  even  meanness 
grown  and  strengthened,  with  a  grand  polaf  purpose  ever  before  them,  to 


THE  NATIONAL    TEMPERAMENT  AND   CHARACTER.       155 

redeem  and  ennoble  their  apparently  abject  policy,  were  to  write  a  new  and 
very  diflFerent  tale.  The  kniazes  of  the  old  and  degenerated  line  still 
remained,  a  title  being  an  unalienable  birthright  common  to  all  the  members 
of  a  family  down  to  all  times  and  posterity,  but  gradually  settled  into  the 
condition  of  mere  landlords,  owners  of  estates — in  a  word,  country  gentle- 
men, with  a  claim,  by  courtesy,  on  court  favours,  state  charges,  honorable 
missions,  and  the  like.  Then  came  a  time  when  the  title — the  only  national 
one — began  to  be  conferred  at  pleasure  as  a  reward  for  state  services,  usually 
with  lands  attached.  After  this  all  vestiges  of  lingering  royalty  departed 
from  the  kniazes,  who  merely  form  a  higher  layer  of  nobility,  whose  posi- 
tion in  life  —  eminent  or  obscure,  wealthy  or  penniless  —  has  nothing  to  do 
with  their  title,  but  is  subject  to  the  usual  conditions  and  vicissitudes. 
There  stiU  are  a  number  of  families  who  can  trace  themselves  back  to 
Rurik,  but  several  have  lost  or  dropped  the  title  by  the  way. 

As  for  the  word  itself,  it  has  come  down  a  long  way  and  tells  the  story 
of  its  mighty  past :  it  is  the  Slavic  equivalent  of  the  Teutonic  chuning, 
konung,  konig,  king,  and  equally  derived  with  the  Sanskrit  jdnaka,  which 
originally  meant  both  "king "  and  "  father." 


APPENDIX  TO  BOOK  IH.,  CHAPTER  I.— NO.  2.     (See  p.  145,  note  5.) 

The  cabbage  soup  referred  to  is  made  out  of  sour  cabbage  (almost  identi- 
cal with  the  German  Sauerkraut)  and  water,  without  meat,  and  has  received 
from  the  people  the  grimly  humorous  designation  of  "empty  shtshi." 
Cooked  with  fresh  fat  beef,  which  is  served  in  it  cut  up  into  good-sized 
pieces,  and  enriched  with  a  teacupful  of  thick  sour  (or  clotted)  cream — 
stnietdna — it  is  the  national  soup  and — a  dish  for  kings.  Mr.  Beaulieu  for- 
gets the  obligato  accompaniment — buckwheat  baked  porridge.  It  is  much 
like  oatmeal,  only  that,  after  having  been  steamed  for  a  while,  it  is  finished 
in  the  oven, — invariably  in  an  earthenware  pot  of  a  peculiar  shape,  probably 
as  old  as  the  race.  This  is  the  renowned  kctsha,  the  fragrance  of  which, 
when  the  thick,  hard  crust  has  been  removed  and  the  rich  golden  butter 
mixed  in,  haunts  an  exile's  hours  of  gloom  and  gives  homesickness  a  tan- 
gible form.  For  this  porridge  and  the  cabbage  pottage — shtshi  da  kdsha — 
are  the  staple  standby  of  every  Russian  table  without  exception,  beginning 
with  the  Emperor's  own,  and  the  very  name  is  replete  with  associations, 
national  and  personal,  since  there  is  not  one  of  us  but  has  grown  up  on  it 
and  the  wholesome,  toothsome,  literally  "  black  bread,"  made  of  honest. 


156      THE  EMPIRE  OF  THE   TSARS  AND    THE  RUSSIANS. 

unmixed,  unbolted  rye  meal  ;  and  the  same  triad,  so  national  as  to  have  be 
come  almost  symbolical,  has  greeted  us  on  every  board  we  have  been  invited 
to,  both  where  it  was  merely  an  accessory,  ushering  in  an  elaborate  French 
banquet  in  graceful  acknowledgment  of  the  common  bond  of  nationality — 
and  where  hospitality  had  nothing  else,  besides  a  hearty  welcome  and  "  with 
God's  blessing"  (s  Bbgomt)  to  bestow.  Yes  !  Shtshi  da  khsha,  and  black 
ryebread  (tchdmoy  hliib,  the  latter  word,  by  the  way,  identical  with  the 
Anglo-Saxon  hlaib,  "bread,"  and  German  laib,  "a  loaf"),  and  the  ubiqui- 
tously steaming,  friendly  samovhr,  whether  of  silver  or  brass,  with  its  glit- 
tering tea-equipage,  whether  of  egg-shell  china  or  homely  stoneware — these 
embody  Russian  family  life,  from  tsar  to  peasant,  from  cradle  to  grave. 


APPENDIX  TO  BOOK  III.,  CHAPTER  I.— NO.  3.     (See  p.  145,  note  6.) 

The  name  "I/ent "  properly  belongs  only  to  the  forty  days  of  fasting, 
meagre  fare,  and  mortification  of  the  flesh  generally,  preceding  the  Easter 
festival  in  the  Catholic  and  Greek  Orthodox  Churches  and  their  branches. 
But  what  other  name  can  be  found  for  the  three  analogous  periods  in  the 
Greek  Church  year  ?  Six  weeks  before  Christmas,  a  fortnight  before  the 
feast  of  Peter  and  Paul  (29th  of  June),  and  another  fortnight  before  the 
Assumption  of  the  Virgin  (15th  of  August).  The  fare  prescribed  is  the  same 
for  all  and  makes  us  smile  at  what  the  Catholics  call  Lent :  it  means  simply 
abstention  from  all  animal  food,  under  which  head  come  not  only  the  various 
meats  of  fowl  and  quadruped,  but  milk,  butter,  and  eggs.  The  almost  uni- 
versal use  of  fish  is  in  reality  a  concession  to  the  degeneracy  of  modem  con- 
stitutions and  religious  zeal,  not  extended  to  the  clergy,  especially  the  Black 
Clergy  (monks  and  nuns).  The  moderately  pious  among  laymen  abstain  from 
fish  during  the  first  week  of  I/cnt,  the  fourth  and  the  last  (Holy  Week).  It  is 
astonishing  how  far  mushrooms  will  go  as  substitute  for  meat.  We  have  a 
dozen  edible  varieties,  all  of  them  wholesome,  nourishing  food,  and  some 
ranking  with  the  choicest  delicacies.  The  woods  are  as  full  of  them  as  of 
berries,  and  the  children  of  each  family  spend  half  the  long  summer  days 
gathering  them.  Indeed,  that  and  "berrying"  are  the  chief  national  sum- 
mer amusements  in  which  young  and  old  share  with  almost  equal  zest  in 
the  better  classes,  affording  endless  fun  in  the  way  of  family  and  social  pic- 
nicking, hay  rides  in  springless  farm  wagons,  etc.  For  the  poor  it  is  not  a 
question  of  amusement  and  housewives'  rival  display  of  skill  in  preserving, 
pickling,  drying,  but  actually  a  vital  matter  ;  and  dire  indeed  would  be  the 


THE  NATIONAL    TEMPERAMENT  AND   CHARACTER.       157 

■winter  prospects  but  for  the  chaplets  of  little  shrivelled,  leather-like  black- 
ish morsels  strung  up  along  the  rafters  of  the  living-room  in  the  izbcL,  eked 
out  by  a  few  strings  of  onions  and,  down  in  the  cellar,  a  heap  of  those  huge 
black-skinned,  terribly  strong  radishes, — half-way  between  the  pink-and- 
white  table  radish  and  the  violent  tear-compelling  horseradish, — which, 
seasoned  with  various  kinds  of  oil,  yield  a  wholesome  though  coarse  relish 
to  relieve  the  monotony  of  the  everlasting  dry  black  bread.  Green  hemp- 
seed  oil  is  the  staple  article  of  the  poor,  though,  as  an  acquired  taste,  with 
that  same  black  radish,  it  is  cultivated  by  many  a  blast  aristocratic  palate. 
Not,  however,  with  k&sha,  in  lieu  of  butter,  as  the  common  people  use  it  in 
I^nt  time.  Other  oils,  as  rape  seed  and  especially  sunflower-seed  oil,  are  very 
acceptable  substitutes  in  cooking,  and  even  pastry.  The  Lenten  fare  of  the 
average  well-to-do-family  table,  by  long  practice  and  ingenuity,  reaches  a 
highly  respectable  standard  of  excellence.  It  is  a  special  branch  of  the  art, 
and  the  skill  and  inventiveness  displayed  by  high-toned  club  and  restaurant 
cooks  are  crucial  tests,  so  that  many  a  church  magnate — bishop  or  archbishop 
— takes  pride  in  his  Ivcnten  fare  as  the  crowning  perfection  of  his  establish- 
ment. Indeed  the  variety  that  can  be  attained  in  this  seemingly  poor  and 
limited  field — of  course  with  fish  included — is  a  constant  source  of  amaze- 
ment to  foreigners.  The  fish  soups  are  renowned,  and  the  king  of  them  all, 
the  sterlet  soup,  can  compare,  for  richness  of  flavor  and  costliness  of  material, 
only  with  the  turtle  soup  of  aldermanic  fame.  The  daintiness  of  the  des- 
serts is  unsurpassed — and  no  wonder,  when  there  is  the  whole  range  of  dried 
and  candied  fruits,  jellies  and  syrups,  and  the  place  of  milk  and  cream  is 
taken  by  a  substitute  which  every  Russian  woman  knows  how  to  prepare 
out  of  almonds  pounded  in  a  mortar  with  water  measured  according  to  the 
thickness  and  strength  desired.  That  tea  and  coffee  whitened  and  flavored 
with  "almond  milk"  or  "  almond  cream  "  are  uniquely  delicious  beverages, 
is  known  to  few  outside  of  Russia.  To  sum  up :  the  wealthy  and  fairly 
prosperous  are  not  as  much  to  be  pitied  as  would  seem  at  first  sight  if  they 
are  rigid  observers  of  the  Church  canons  in  matters  of  food,  although  the 
prolonged  deprivation  of  meat,  milk,  and  eggs  tells  on  most  modem  consti- 
tutions, for  the  palate  is  as  frequently  the  gainer  as  the  loser.  How  far  such 
I/cnten  fare,  requiring  far  more  thought,  care,  and  elaborateness  in  the  prep- 
aration than  ordinary  meat  fare,  answers  the  original  religious  object  of  the 
institution,  is  a  question  which  does  not  belong  here.  For  the  poor,  the  Lent 
periods  are  times  of  increased  hardship  and  most  debilitating  want  of  nour- 
ishment   The  specially  appointed  fast-days  are  equally  severe  for  all.    The 


158       THE  EMPIRE   OF   THE    TSARS  AND    THE  RUSSIANS. 

two  principal  are  the  eve  of  Christmas  and  that  of  Twelfth  Night.  On  these 
days  neither  food  nor  water  must  pass  the  lips  from  midnight  until  the 
rising  of  the  evening  star.  This  is  the  reason  why  a  Christmas  tree  on 
Christmas  Eve  is  an  impossibility.  The  tree  may  be  lit  on  Christmas  night 
or  any  night  of  the  ensuing  week  (the  school  holidays  lasting  from  Christ- 
mas Eve  to  Twelfth  Night — 6th  of  January),  but  the  usual  time  is  New  Year's 
Eve.  It  is  a  comfort  to  know  that  children,  up  to  seven  years,  are  exempted 
both  from  fasting  and  Lent  fare  ;  from  seven  to  fourteen  the  severity  of  the 
observances  is  considerably  alleviated  for  them.  A  far  larger  proportion  of 
the  higher  classes  than  is  usually  suppKJsed  are  church  goers  and  strict 
observers  of  Lents,  fasts,  etc.  Then  there  are  those  who  do  in  this  line  as 
much  as  they  think  fit  or  absolutely  necessary  for  their  souls'  welfare,  or — 
for  respectability.  The  entirely  emancipated,  to  which  number  the  bodies 
of  literature,  science,  and  art  belong  almost  without  exception,  form  the 
class  best  known  to  foreigners.  In  this  respect  again  Petersburgh  is  far 
ahead  of  Moscow,  where  it  is  not  impossible  to  find  old-time  piety  combined 
with  distinction  in  these  careers. 


APPENDIX  TO  BOOK  UI.,  CHAPTER  I.— NO.  4.     (See  p.  152,  note  10.) 

All  that  our  author  says  about  the  out-door  eflFects  of  the  spring  thaw  and 
about  the  atmosphere  in  the  rural  izbh  is  unfortunately  true  in  every  detail. 
But  his  strictures  on  the  city  dwellings  in  this  respect  are  unfounded.  Our 
heating  system,  which  we  have  in  common  with  all  the  extreme  north  of 
Europe — Sweden,  Norway,  Denmark  and  some  of  the  northernmost  parts  of 
Germany — is  the  only  perfect  one,  combining  the  power  of  regulating  the 
heat  within  half  a  degree,  evenness  of  temperature  throughout  the  dwelling, 
active  ventilation,  and  great  economy  of  fuel.  The  valves  in  the  flues,  by 
which  we  can  let  in  the  outer  air,  are  six  or  eight  inches  in  diameter ; 
there  are  two  by  the  side  of  each  stove,  accessible  by  a  little  door  opening 
into  the  room,  and  can  be  opened  just  as  much  or  as  little  as  desired.  They 
are  of  course  wide  open  during  the  hour  or  so  which  it  takes  the  stove  to 
consume  its  daily  armful  of  wood,  or — in  the  south — pail  of  coal.  Such  is 
the  allowance  for  twenty-four  hours,  and  only  on  extremest  cold  days,  not 
thirty  in  the  winter,  is  it  doubled  and  the  firing  operation  repeated  after 
twelve  hours.  The  perfect  protection  afforded  by  the  putting  up  for  winter 
of  duplicate  window  frames  calked  all  round  the  edges,  with  sometimes  a 
strip  of  felt  nailed  over  the  putty  for  greater  security,  is  scarcely  to  be  counted 


THE  NATIONAL    TEMPERAMENT  AND   CHARACTER.       1 59 

a  defect,  and  is  surely  preferable  to  the  expensive  and  only  half-efficient 
weatherstrips  of  this  and  other  countries.  In  one  at  least  of  the  windows 
of  each  room  there  is  a  pane  made  with  hinges,  to  open  and  close.  It  is 
kept  open  in  the  morning  while  the  chamberwork  is  being  done,  and  is 
opened  for  as  long  as  the  cold  allows  several  times  in  the  day,  though  to  do  so 
is  not  always  easy,  as  the  edge  often  freezes  hard  and  the  ice  must  be  broken 
to  get  the  pane  to  work.  On  the  sill  the  interval  between  the  two  window 
frames  is  filled,  to  the  height  of  some  three  inches,  with  sand,  in  which  are 
stuck  a  few  small  paper  cornucopias  filled  with  coarse  salt,  a  great  absorber 
of  moisture.  Owing  to  all  these  precautions  the  atmosphere  of  the  dwel- 
lings is  singularly  free  from  dampness,  consequently  cannot  be  called  "a 
hothouse  atmosphere"  ;  and  it  is  further  corrected  by  the  universally  popu- 
lar window-gardens,  and  the  tall,  large-leaved  foliage  plants  which  are  such 
favorites  for  both  decorative  and  sanitary  reasons. 


APPENDIX  TO  BOOK  III.,  CHAPTER  I.— NO.  5.     (See  p.  153,  note  11.) 

A  man  who  takes  an  obligatory  thorough  washing  once  a  week,  cannot 
be  personally  very  dirty.  For  a  Russian  of  the  lower  classes  it  is,  besides, 
a  matter  of  religious  duty  to  wash  his  hands  before  "  touching  bread."  For 
the  same  reason  the  table  is  kept  scrupulously  scoured,  and  is  washed  down 
every  time  a  meal  is  to  be  spread  on  it,  and  the  dishes,  bowls,  and  platters  are 
treated  likewise.  If  the  family  can  aflFord  it,  the  table  is  covered  with  a 
snow-white  linen  cloth,  homespun  and  homewoven.  "  Bread,"  the  symbol 
of  food,  of  life,  has  still  much  of  the  veneration  of  primeval  ages  clinging  to 
it ;  it  is  not  to  be  played  with  or  frittered  away  by  the  children  or  wasted  in 
any  way,  and  no  crumbs  must  be  suffered  to  fall  to  the  ground ;  they  may  be 
collected  and  served  as  food  for  the  chickens,  or  scattered  about  for  "  God's 
little  birds," — a  pretty  custom  which  we  can  trace  to  one  of  the  daily  offer- 
ings prescribed  to  the  Brahmans  by  ancient  Hindu  law.  What  Mr.  Beaulieu 
says  about  the  condition  of  the  peasants'  clothing  neutralizing  the  effects  of 
the  daily  bath,  cannot  be  disputed,  but  it  applies  only  to  the  very  poor.  A 
well-to-do  peasant  family  often  has  a  bathroom  of  its  own  and  always  suffi- 
cient change  of  raiment.  In  this  as  in  so  many  respects,  things  stand  worst 
in  towns,  in  factory  quarters,  and  others  crowded  with  the  poorer  laboring 
class.  But  in  the  capitals,  and  in  due  time  in  the  larger  cities,  great  and 
thoughtful  improvements  have  been  made  in  the  public  baths.  The  most 
to  the  point  is  the  arrangement  providing  for  the  bather's  shirt  and  trousers 


l60      THE  EMPIRE   OF  THE    TSARS  AND   THE  RUSSIANS, 

being  laandried  and  dried  ready  for  him  when  he  retnms  to  the  dressing-room 
if  he  has  no  change,  and  a  certain  iron  press  closet  in  which  his  tulUp  (sheep- 
skin) is  subjected  to  a  degree  of  dry  heat  which  entirely  frees  it  from  vermin. 
They  say  that  the  floor  of  that  closet  seems  strewn  with  a  black  powder 
and  most  be  swept  out  every  couple  of  hours.  These  two  items,  incalculably 
beneficial  as  they  are,  are  included  in  the  charge  for  the  use  of  the  bath- 
rooms— from  two  to  five  cents,  according  to  accommodation,  of  which  there 
are  three  grades  for  the  common  people,  apart  from  the  really  luxurious  pub- 
lic bathrooms,  with  carpets,  marble  swimming  basins,  attendants,  etc.  (from 
fifteen  to  twenty-five  cents  a  person),  and  the  private  suites  of  three  rooms — 
dressing-room,  washing-room  with  wooden  benches  all  around,  bath  tub,  and 
a  sufficiency  of  wooden  buckets  and  brass  basins,  and  the  small  vapor  room 
with  its  shelves  along  one  wall.  These  suites,  which  occupy  a  separate  part 
of  the  building,  opening  on  both  sides  of  a  long  corridor,  cost  from  fifty  cents 
to  two  dollars,  according  as  they  are  fitted  up,  and  you  are  not  limited  as 
to  time — within  reasonable  boimds,  say  an  hour  and  a  half,  or  two  houis. 


BOOK  III.      CHAPTER  II. 

The  Russian  Character  and  the  Struggle  against  the  Climate— The  North 
far  from  Being  the  Natural  Cradle  of  Liberty— Resignation,  Passiveness, 
and  Hardening  in  Evil— Practical  Spirit  and  Realistic  Instincts — Impres« 
sions  Received  from  Nature  ;  her  Sadness — Her  Grandeur  and  Poverty- 
Effects  of  these  Contrasts— On  the  So-Called  Nomadic  Tendencies 
of  the  Russians — The  Monotony  of  Great-Russia  and  the  Lack  of 
Originality. 

The  direct  influence  of  climate  on  the  human  organ- 
ism and  habits,  on  the  physical  and  economical  conditions  of 
existence,  is  neither  the  only  nor  perhaps  the  deepest  one.  Nature 
indirectly  exerts  a  considerable  influence  over  the  thoughts,  the 
feelings,  the  entire  character,  by  the  passions  she  provokes  and 
the  faculties  she  calls  into  play.  The  first  remark  suggested  by 
the  physical  formation  of  Great-Russia  is  that  life  there,  more  than 
anjrvehere  else,  is  a  strife  against  nature,  a  hand  to  hand  combat 
against  an  ever-present  and  unvanqtiished  foe.  Under  that  sky 
man  cannot,  as  in  more  temperate  climes,  forget  his  adversary  ; 
nor  can  he  ever  completely  triumph  over  that  foe,  and  even  while 
struggling  for  the  land  foot  for  foot,  he  is  often  made  to  yield 
before  a  superior  force.  Hence  several  apparently  incompatible 
traits  of  the  Russian  national  character.  This  warfare  is  first  of 
all  a  school  of  patience,  resignation,  submissiveness.  Unable  to 
sUp  his  neck  from  under  the  yoke  of  nature,  he  has  borne  that  of 
man  more  patiently  ;  the  one  has  bent  and  fashioned  him  for  the 
other.  The  tyranny  of  climate  prepared  him  for  man's  absolute 
power.  The  object  of  all  his  striving  being  bare  existence,  des- 
potism weighed  on  him  less.  We  should  not  indiscriminately 
II 

l6i 


l62       THE  EMPIRE   OF   THE    TSARS  AND    THE  RUSSIANS. 

acquiesce  in  the  ancient  theory  which  set  down  the  peoples  of  the 
North  as  apt  for  freedom  and  those  of  the  South  as  doomed  to 
bondage.  At  a  certain  latitude,  in  a  g^ven  environment  of  phys- 
ical conditions,  the  North  can  bow  the  souls  as  well  as  the  bodies, 
and  culture  alone  can  raise  and  straighten  them.  The  grand 
advantage  the  North  possesses,  is  that  there  the  liberating 
eflficiency  of  culture  is  always  possible,  while  in  tropical  countries 
the  final  success  remains  still  doubtful. 

One  of  the  qualities  that  have  been  most  developed  by  the 
climate  and  the  strife  against  nature,  is  passive  courage,  endur- 
ance, negative  energy,  the  power  of  inertia.  Hardening  endurance 
has  long  been  the  Great-Russian's  popular  ideal.  This  feeling  is 
very  apparent  in  an  old  national  game,  a  sort  of  rustic  boxing 
match,  in  which  the  combatants  vied  not  in  strength  and  skill, 
but  in  endtu^ance,  the  victor  being  not  he  who  floored  his  antago- 
nist, but  he  who  could  take  most  hard  knocks  without  crying  out 
for  mercy.  I^ife,  at  one  with  history,  has  fashioned  the  Great- 
Russian  to  a  stoicism,  the  heroism  of  which  he  himself  is  not 
conscious  of.  Nobody  can  suflFer  like  a  Russian  ;  no  one  can  die 
like  him.  In  the  quiet  courage  with  which  he  faces  suffering  and 
death,  there  is  something  of  the  stolid  resignation  of  the  captive 
Indian,  ennobled,  however,  by  serene  religious  conviction.' 

The  first  time  I  met  a  Russian  peasant  was  is  1868,  in  Palestine, 
in  March,  at  the  beginning  of  I^nt.     I  was  camping  out,  under  a 

'  Nowhere  does  the  Riissian's  genuineness,  earnestness,  simplicity  shine 
forth  with  a  steadier  and  clearer  light  than  on  the  deathbed,  the  battlefield, 
the  scaffold.  His  inveterate  hatred  of  cant,  his  contempt  of  "  phrase," 
"  attitude,"  catchwords  (which,  by  the  way,  makes  him  out  of  sympathy  with 
hero-worship  or  what  is  commonly  called  so)  never  leaves  him,  least  of  all  at 
critical  points  and  tragic  climaxes.  This  is  why  the  effective  "  last  words," 
the  deliberate  "  posings  "  and  self-drapings  with  which  men  of  other  nations, 
even  the  great  ones,  generally  think  it  necessary  to  emphasize  their  public 
acts  and  especially  the  last  one  of  all — death  under  the  public  eye  with  a 
view  to  producing  a  certain  impression,  not  only  does  not  warm  the  Russian's 
heart  or  appeal  to  his  admiration,  but  either  jars  on  him  and  puts  him  out 
of  patience,  or  leaves  him  coldly  critical,  with  a  curl  of  the  lip  not  unlike 
a  sneer. 


THE  NATIONAL    TEMPERAMENT  AND   CHARACTER.      1 63 

tent,  on  the  margin  of  Solomon's  Ponds,  not  far  from  Bethlehem. 
The  night  had  been  disturbed  by  one  of  those  tempests,  bearers  of 
wind  and  rain,  which  are  of  frequent  occurrence  in  Syria  at  that 
time  of  the  year.  We  had  been  joined  by  one  of  those  groups  of 
Russian  pilgrims  that  walk  over  the  Holy  I^and  in  small  gangs, 
staff  in  hand,  with  no  other  luggage  than  a  canvas  bag  and  a 
wooden  bowl.  They  were  all  peasants  ;  there  were  among  them 
both  men  and  women  ;  most  of  them  were  aged.*  Tired  out  with 
the  hardships  of  a  distant  journey  and  a  long  march,  they  were 
seeking  around  our  tents,  or  at  the  foot  of  ruinous  walls,  for  shelter 
against  the  driving  rain.  At  dawn  they  wanted  to  return  to  the 
Greek  Convent  at  Bethlehem  ;  but,  although  the  distance  was  not 
over  a  few  miles,  cold  and  fatigue  prevented  several  from  reaching 
it.  When  their  strength  gave  out,  they  would  drop  down  on  the 
ground,  and  the  others  would  silently  pass  on,  giving  them  up  as 
they  gave  up  themselves.  We  followed  them  very  closely,  on 
horseback,  numb  with  cold  too,  and  worn  out,  making  for  the 
lyatin  Convent  at  Bethlehem.  I  thus  came  on  two  of  these 
peasants,  lying  on  the  rocky  ground  in  the  pathway,  which  the 
rain  had  transformed  into  a  rivulet.  It  was  in  vain  I  tried  to 
raise  them,  to  revive  them  with  rum,  to  haul  them  up  on  a  horse  ; 
they  seemed  bent  on  letting  themselves  die.'  When  we  reached 
Bethlehem,  we  could  send  out  assistance  to  them.  That  very 
morning  one  man  and  two  women,  Russians,  had  been  found  dead 
on  roads  and  buried. 

It  was  with  the  same  feeling,  the  same  calm  and  gentle  fatal- 
ism that,  during  the  Crimean  war,  Russian  soldiers  followed  their 
leaders  across  the  steppes  of  the  south,  marching  until  totally 

*  Household  cares  and  the  communal  authorities  rarely  allow  young 
people  to  embark  on  these  long  pilgrimages,  whether  within  the  empire  or 
abroad,  of  which  the  lower  classes  are  so  fond. 

'  They  probably  were.  Death  such  as  this,  at  the  goal  of  the  long,  weary 
pilgrimage  on  the  sacred  earth  of  the  Holy  Land,  is  a  beatific  vision  to  these 
simple,  loving  souls,  as  stire  and  short  a  cut  to  Paradise  as  death  in  battle  to 
the  Moslem. 


164      THE  EMPIRE   OF   THE    TSARS  AND   THE   RUSSIANS. 

exhausted,  when  they  would  die  along  the  roads,  by  the  hundred 
thousand,  with  not  a  cry  of  revolt,  almost  without  a  moan  or 
murmur.  It  was  with  the  same  patience,  the  same  resigned 
energy  that,  in  the  Balkan  wars,  they  stood  the  extremes  of  cold, 
of  heat,  of  fatigue,  of  hunger.  The  Russian  soldier  is  the  most 
enduring  in  Europe  ;  in  this  respect  no  other  can  be  compared  to 
him  but  his  secular  adversary,  the  Turkish  soldier.  Both  have  a 
capacity  for  suflfering  unknown  to  the  nations  of  the  West.  And 
yet  the  Russian  people  are  naturally  the  least  pugnacious,  the 
least  warlike  in  the  world.  They  never  were,  at  any  time. 
Whatever  conquests  they  have  achieved,  they  are  devoid  of  con- 
quering instincts.  Essentially  peace-loving,  the  Russian  sees  in 
war  only  a  scourge  to  which  he  submits  out  of  obedience  to  God 
and  the  Tsar. 

From  this  strife  against  the  climate,  which  has  fashioned  him 
so  well  for  resignation,  the  Great-Russian  derives  two  opposite 
qualities.  Together  with  a  singular  mixture  of  strength  and 
weakness,  of  tenacity  and  elasticity,  it  has  given  him  a  curious 
mixture  of  roughness  and  good  nature,  of  insensibility  and  kind- 
ness. The  ruggedness  of  the  world  around  him,  while  hardening 
him  for  himself,  teaches  him  compassion  for  others.  He  knows 
what  it  is  to  suffer,  so  can  sympathize  with  his  neighbor,  and 
succors  him  as  much  as  lies  within  his  power.  Family  feelings, 
beneficence  towards  the  poor,  pity  for  the  unfortunate  of  all  sorts, 
— these  are  some  among  the  most  marked  features  of  the  national 
character.  Contrary  to  a  vulgar  prejudice,  the  Russian,  under 
his  rugged  shell,  is  generally  affectionate,  gentle,  even  tender ; 
but  let  him  encounter  an  obstacle,  let  him  engage  in  a  struggle 
with  an  adversary,  the  latent  ruggedness  and  harshness  at  once 
take  the  upper  hand.  In  the  unceasing  struggle  against  a  ruthless 
nature,  he  has  learned  to  respect  the  laws  of  war,  which  he  applies 
as  he  endures  them — ^with  inflexibility.' 

*The  Russian's  mind  is  intensely  theoretical,  his  conscience  rigid  in  the 
extreme,  holding  all  compromises  with  existing  things  as  dishonest  or,  at 


THE  NATIONAL    TEMPERAMENT  AND   CHARACTER.      1 65 

It  is  in  those  struggles  in  which  Russia's  very  existence  seems 
at  stake  that  all  these  contrasts  appear.  Otherwise — as  was 
shown  in  the  French  campaign  of  18 14,  as  well  as  in  the  Crimean 
war — the  Russian  is  the  most  generous  of  enemies.  Gentle  and 
compassionate  in  his  private  capacity,  he  can,  in  his  national  and 
civil  struggles,  become  pitiless  as  soldier  or  public  servant ;  but, 
the  victory  won,  he  often  shows  himself  again  as  simply  kind  as 
he  just  was  ingenuously  stem.  In  the  country  whose  sad  privi- 
lege it  was  to  draw  on  itself  his  worst  severities,  in  Poland,  I  have 
sometimes  heard  pathetic  stories  told  of  this  contrast  in  the 
Russian  character.  Here  is  one,  told  us  by  Poles  :  In  one  of  those 
terrible  insturrections,  the  consequences  of  which  still  weigh  so 
heavily  on  this  hapless  land,  a  Russian  non-commissioned  ofl&cer, 
quartered  on  a  Polish  family,  took  the  liberty  of  kissing  the  child 
of  the  house.  In  the  eyes  of  the  mother,  who,  like  all  the  Polish 
women,  was  an  exalted  patriot,  this  Russian  kiss  was  pollution. 
She  was  pregnant  at  the  time,  and  committed  the  imprudence  of 
giving  the  offender  a  box  on  the  ears.  Instead  of  getting  angry 
or  complaining  to  his  chiefs,  the  Russian  sergeant  offered  his 
other  cheek  and  allowed  himself  to  be  turned  out  of  the  room. 
Soon  after,  he  left  the  town,  and,  having  requested  a  comrade  to 
inform  him  of  the  birth  of  the  expected  child,  sent  it  little  chris- 
tening gifts. 

The  Russian  has  not  much  comprehension  for  resistance 
unencouraged  by  the  hope  of  success.  Himself  accustomed  to  bow 
before  fatality,  he  thinks  it  but  just  that  other  people  should  do 

the  best,  cowardly.  Therefore,  once  possessed  of  an  idea,  they  go  all 
lengths,  and  therefore,  too,  should  there  ever  be  a  Russian  revolution, — 
which  Heaven  in  its  mercy  forefend, — the  horrors  of  French  '93  will  pale 
before  it.  How  otherwise  could  we  find  among  the  most  ruthless  of  "ter- 
rorists," ready  at  any  moment  for  wholesale  massacre,  gentle,  soft-eyed 
creatures  that  would  take  to  their  bosoms  a  hurt  cur  of  the  streets  and  go 
out  of  their  way  not  to  tread  upon  an  insect?  Remember  the  youth  placed 
in  charge  of  the  mine  under  "  Mikhaylofsky  Street "  in  Petersburgh,  who, 
when  he  left  his  basement  chamber,  flying  from  the  police,  did  not  forget 
to  leave  on  the  table  the  money  due  to  his  cat's  butcher. 


1 66      THE  EMPIRE  OF   THE    TSARS  AND   THE  RUSSIANS, 

SO  too.  If  he  does  not  worship  force,  he  certainly  respects  it. 
Something  like  this  medley  of  contrasting  feelings  is  found  amongst 
the  Germans,  especially  the  Prussians  *  ;  but  with  the  latter  the 
affectionate  side  is  more  exclusive,  more  turned  inward,  more 
selfishly  domestic,  while  the  rugged,  brutal  side  is  turned  more 
outward  to  the  world,  with  a  superadded  supercilious  arrogance 
to  which  the  Russian,  as  a  rule,  is  a  stranger. 

The  faculty  which  has  been  aroused  most  thoroughly  in  the 
Great-Russian  by  this  struggle  against  a  cold  and  implacable 
nature  is  a  practical,  positive  spirit ;  this  is  the  feature  by  which 
chiefly  he  differs  from  the  L,ittle- Russian  and  from  the  western  and 
southern  Slavs.'  This  predominant  quality  of  his  shows  in  every- 
thing, and  everything  tends  to  account  for  it.  As  one  of  his ' 
writers  remarks,*  it  was  in  the  secular  labors  of  colonization  that 
he  contracted  this  disposition  to  see  in  everything  the  immediate 
aim  and  the  realities  of  life.  Hence  that  presence  of  mind,  that 
fiacility  in  devising  ways  and  means,  that  wealth  of  resovu-ces,  that 
tact  in  dealing  with  men  and  things,  which  characterize  the  Great- 
Russian.  Very  perceptible  in  the  people's  manners,  politics, 
literature,  this  tendency  is  not  less  apparent  in  things  where  it 

*  The  Prussian  people  are  much  mixed  with  Slavs,  and  a  great  part  of 
them  are  Prussian  only  politically  and  from  long  habit,  not  in  blood.  This 
is  especially  noticeable  in  the  Pomeranians,  who,  along  with  their  purely 
Slavic  name — PomoriilniS,  "  the  people  by  the  sea" — have  retained  a  very 
pure  and  handsome  Slavic  type  of  features.  Morally  they  are  almost  en- 
tirely germanized,  with  a  superadded  stolid  obstinacy  of  their  own,  much 
like  that  of  the  Bretons  of  old  Armorica.  Does  association  with  the  rugged 
northern  sea  produce  it  in  the  course  of  time  ? 

•  This  is  a  feature  of  our  national  character  very  patent  to  us  Russians, 
but  until  now  scarcely  even  suspected  by  foreigners,  who  thus  lost  an  im- 
portant clue  to  the  Russian  nature  and  its  practical  workings.  The  first  to 
point  it  out  with  a  precision  and  surety  due  to  intelligent  observation,  and  to 
bring  it  out  in  the  living  form  of  an  artistic  creation,  was  Henri  Gr^ville,  in 
her  admirable  novel,  Un  Violon  Russe.  In  this  book,  by  far  the  best  of  her 
Russian  series,  everything  is  caught  warm  from  life — even  to  the  servant 
girl  who  appears  just  once,  to  open  the  door  to  visitors  and  go  on  with  her 
scrubbing. 

♦  Mr.  Kav^lin  :  Thoughts  and  Notes  on  Russian  History. 


THE  NATIONAL    TEMPERAMENT  AND   CHARACTER.       167 

would  seem  most  out  of  place,  such  as  poetry  and  religion.  The 
Great-Russian  popular  songs  show  little  taste  for  abstractions  or 
personifications  of  any  sort.  No  nation  has  a  less  metaphysical 
turn  of  mind,  or  takes  less  thought  of  the  essence  of  things.  His 
favorite  sciences,  those  that  most  attract  him,  are  the  physical  sci- 
ences, the  natural  sciences,  the  social  sciences.  The  whole  nation, 
the  educated  classes  as  well  as  the  ignorant  masses,  is  pervaded 
by  a  more  or  less  conscious  positivism.  The  quality  most 
esteemed  by  the  peasant  is  common-sense  ;  he  says  his  worst 
about  the  Pole  when  he  calls  him  "  brainless."  Few  nations  are 
more  devoid  of  sentiment,  even  while  pluming  themselves  on  it. 

Indeed,  the  pretension  to  practical  sense,  with  the  Great-Rus- 
sian, at  times  verges  on  brutality.  Was  it  not  a  Russian  who 
said  that  a  piece  of  cheese  was  worth  more  than  a  Pushkin  ?  * 
These  realistic  instincts  make  themselves  felt  in  literature  and  in 
all  the  lines  of  art,  notably  in  painting,  in  criticism,  in  history,  in 
philosophy,  or,  more  correctly,  in  the  absence  of  philosophy  and 
metaphysics.  The  romanticism  of  the  first  half  of  the  nineteenth 
century,  like  the  classicism  of  the  preceding  century,  and  notwith- 
standing the  genius  of  Pushkin  and  Lermontof,  was  little  else  than 
an  importation  fi-om  abroad.  Nowadays  the  national  literature 
belongs,  and  has  belonged  for  quite  a  while  already,  almost 
entirely  to  realism  or  naturalism.     Of  all  foreign  writers,  the  one 

*  This  piece  of  criticism  was  beaten  by  one  of  the  would-be  prophets  of 
"  the  last  word  of  science,"  (how  sick  Russian  ears  have  grown  of  the  sound 
of  that  phrase — and  a  few  others  !)  magazine  reviewers,  who  retailed  at  third 
hand  the  materialistic  theories  of  Feuerbach,  Moleschott,  etc.  On  one 
occasion  he  went  into  a  rage  against  poetry  in  general,  and  became  especially 
rampant  against  Shakespeare.  Shakespeare  ?  Faugh  !  What  was  the  good 
oi  him  ?  What  was"  the  sense  of  him  ?  Why,  there  was  more  sense  in  "  soft- 
boiled  boots."  The  expression  has  become  a  by-word  and  a  classic.  It  was 
the  same  wiseacre — or  another  of  that  ilk — who,  in  reviewing  Victor  Hugo's 
Toilers  of  the  Sea,  fell  foul  of  one  of  the  poet's  sweetest  creations,  his 
"  Bird-Girl,"  and  triumphantly  demonstrated  in  a  lengthy  anatomical 
dissertation  that  only  an  ignorant  fool  could  liken  a  human  being  to  a 
bird.  Pretty  work  he  would  make  of  Austin  Dobson's  gem,  charming 
Avice  ! 


l68      THE  EMPIRE  OF  THE   TSARS  AND   THE  RUSSIANS. 

most  read  and  relished  is  Zola,  whom  one  of  their  novelists  *  calls 
*'  The  Hercules  of  Naturalism," — Zola,  who  has  long  numbered 
more  admirers  among  the  Russians  than  among  his  own 
countrymen. 

Nothing  is  as  complex  as  the  character  of  a  man,  how  much 
more  that  of  a  nation.  After  having  portrayed  one  side  of  it,  one 
is  bound  to  present  the  opposite  side,  under  penalty  of  producing 
a  deceptive  likeness.  In  Russia,  as  elsewhere,  nature,  which 
influences  man  in  so  many  divers  and  roundabout  ways,  does  not 
always  impel  him  in  the  same  direction.  She  not  only  acts  on 
the  temperament  through  the  climate,  the  diet,  and  the  habits,  on 
the  character  through  the  needs  which  she  imposes,  or  the  faculties 
which  she  stimulates ;  she  acts,  with  no  less  force,  on  the  imagina- 
tion and  the  entire  soul  through  her  aspects,  through  the  pictures 
she  presents,  the  impressions  she  arouses.  Now,  as  nature  is 
nowhere  simpler,  these  impressions  are  nowhere  clearer.  One  of 
the  first  to  be  perceived  by  the  traveller  is  a  feeling  of  sadness. 
This  sadness  emanates  from  the  sky  and  the  climate ;  Northern 
nations  are  all  more  or  less  touched  with  it ;  in  Russia  the  very 
earth,  flat  and  monotonous,  exhales  it.  The  Russian  of  the  south 
— the  Little-Russian — ^is  not  less  subject  to  it  than  is  he  of  the  north. 

The  Russian  soul  is  melancholy.  If  incurable  boredom,  if 
hypochondria  or  British  "  spleen  "  are  nevertheless  of  rarer  ocoir- 
rence  than  in  England,  it  is  because  the  climate,  being  more 
rugged,  is  far  less  moist  and  misty ;  possibly  also  because  the 
Russian's  sadness  is  tempered  or  dispelled  by  his  sociability,  one 
of  the  qualities  most  generally  common  to  all  the  Slavs,  one 
which,  in  Russia,  the  enforced  seclusion  of  winter  with  its  long 
nights  has  done  most  to  foster  and  develop.  The  Russian's  relish 
for  pleasure  and  emotions,  his  love  of  travelling,  his  passion  for 
gambling,  even  his  propensity  to  drink,  frequentiy  are  with  him, 
as  with  many  other  nations  of  the  North,  only  an  effort  to  forget, 
or  to  fill  an  inner  void. 

*  Bobor^kin. 


THE  NATIONAL    TEMPERAMENT  AND   CHARACTER.      1 69 

It  is  in  the  poetry  and  music  of  the  people,  in  the  songs  or 
**pihni''  of  Great-Russia,  —  those  songs  which  Herzen  used  to 
call  "sounding  tears,"  —  in  those  "airs"  of  slow  rhythm  and  in 
minor  keys,  that  the  native  melancholy,  bred  of  soil  and  clime, 
finds  its  fullest  expression.  Between  the  Russian  songs  and  the 
canzoni  of  Naples  and  Sicily,  all  sun-imbued,  there  is  a  distance 
as  between  the  antipodes.  In  these  popular  songs,  a  cloud  of  soft 
sadness  casts  elegiac  shades  over  the  realistic  background  of  the 
national  character.  In  literature  and  cultured  poetry,  this  sadness 
assumes  a  bitterer,  intenser  flavor.  From  I^ermontof  and  Pushkin 
to  Nekrdssof  and  Tititchef,  the  poetry  of  all  the  schools  is  impreg- 
nated with  it ;  it  makes  itself  felt  in  the  life  as  well  as  in  the  works 
of  all  these  poets,  most  of  whom  died  young,  and  some  tragically. 
"  Sadness,  scepticism,  irony — these  are  the  three  chords  of  Russian 
poetry  "  wrote  Herzen,  who  might  have  quoted  himself  as  an  ex- 
ample. "Our  laugh,"  he  further  remarked,  "  is  but  an  imwhole- 
some  grin."  *  The  fact  is  that  Gbgol's  sarcastic  mirth  is  at  times 
more  heartrending  than  that  of  the  sombrest  English  humorists. 

This  sort  of  melancholy,  inspired  by  the  climate  and  entertained 
by  the  political  rSgime,  at  times  inclines  the  Russian  soul  to  a 
mysticism  which  prevails  over  its  realistic  instincts,  or  combines 
with  them  in  strange  ways  —  witness  more  than  one  popular  reli- 
gious sect,  and  many  a  national  writer,  such  as  Juk6vsky,  G5gol, 
Dostoy^fsky,  Tolstoy.  Between  this  spontaneous  sadness,  at 
times  streaked  with  spells  of  joviality,  and  the  kind  of  pessimism 
so  prominent  in  several  ignorant  sects  as  well  as  in  the  nihilism 
of  literary  youths,  it  is  equally  easy  to  find  a  link. 

In  the  lower  classes,  this  unconscious  melancholy  frequently 
appears  wedded  to  a  resigned  fatalism,  and  the  outcome  is  a 
tranquillity,  a  sort  of  placidity  which  fills  one  with  wonder.  In 
crowds,  in  games,  in  his  cups  even,  the  Great-Russian  is,  as  a 
rule,  peaceable  and  not  noisy.  Very  little  quarrelling  or  riot- 
ousness,  among  men  as  well  as  among  children.  A  crowd,  silent 
*  TTie  Russian  People  and  Socialism. 


I70      THE  EMPIRE  OF  THE   TSARS  AND   THE  RUSSIANS. 

as  nature  herself,— as  the  snow,  which,  in  the  streets  of  cities, 
muffles  the  sound  of  footsteps. 

In  order  better  to  enter  into  the  feelings  of  such  a  crowd,  let 
us  figure  to  ourselves  the  impressions  gathered  through  centuries 
by  the  colonists  from  the  West,  during  their  slow  settling  on  the 
soil  of  Great-Russia.  Face  to  face  with  these  expanses  as  bound- 
less as  the  sea,  man  felt  small.  The  consciousness  of  his  power 
dwindled  before  the  vastness  of  the  land  which  encompassed  him, 
and  which,  down  even  to  our  own  times,  he  felt  incapable  of 
filling.  These  lakes  and  swamps,  unntmibered  and  unbounded, 
these  rivers  which  no  bridge  could  span,  these  forests  without 
end,  these  steppes  with  no  horizon  but  the  sky-line,  —  all  these 
things  brought  home  to  him  his  inferiority. 

If  we  would  analyze  the  chief  outer  features,  we  shall  see  that 
all  the  impressions  produced  by  Russian  nature  can  be  summed 
up  in  the  word  ' '  contrast ' '  :  the  pictiures  presented  to  man  by 
Great-Russia  show  him  his  own  smallness  without  making  him 
realize  the  energies  of  nature.  It  is  not  only  by  its  extent  that  this 
land  dwarfs  man  :  it  attunes  the  imagination  to  dreams  and  vague 
musings,  without  supplying,  as  in  the  South,  materials  for  food 
and  warmth,  /.  e. ,  that  which  trains  it  to  the  gorgeous  poetry  which 
we  admire  in  the  poems  of  India  or  Greece.  Flat  and  bare,  dull 
and  inert,  this  nature  has  not  much  to  stimulate  the  mind  with, 
little  nourishment  for  poetry  and  art.  It  is  not  very  apt  to  suggest 
powerful  conceptions  or  brilliant  imagery.  Even  by  its  meagre 
fertility,  the  Russian  soil  is  often  inferior  to  the  desert  in  its  nudity, 
where,  at  least,  nothing  dwarfs  the  impression  of  immensity.' 

^  It  is  natural  for  a  foreigner  to  think  so,  -whose  necessarily  transient 
stay  could  not  attune  his  soul  to  the  tranquillity  and  inner  silence,  — fr- 
cuHllement — which  would  open  it  to  the  subtle  charm,  the  mystery  of  local 
influences,  repugnant,  moreover,  with  their  northern  and  oriental  melan- 
cholia to  his  Latin  temperament.  But  we  are  passionately  fond  of  our 
steppe,  our  plains,  our  woods,  and  even  a  cursory  acquaintance  with  our 
poets,  novelists,  and  painters  would  suffice  to  show  that  art  and  poetry  find 
therein  ample  and  substantial  food. 


THE  NATIONAL    TEMPERAMENT  AND   CHARACTER.      \J\ 

The  land  formerly  called  Moscovia  is  devoid  of  all  those  grand, 
spectacular  attractions  by  which  nature  amazes  and  uplifts  the 
spirit.  It  has  neither  motmtains  nor  sea,  and  lacks  the  impulse 
which  life  by  the  sea  or  in  the  mountains  gives  to  individuality. 
Its  forests,  sparse  and  stunted  in  size,  lack  majesty ;  most  of  its 
numerous  lakes  have  flat  margins,  like  big  pools.  Russia  has 
been  denied  the  grand  scenery  of  the  North.  She  has  no  surf- 
beaten  coasts ;  no  steep,  beetling  islands ;  no  gulfs  or  sinuous 
fjords;  no  granite  rocks  or  glaciers;  no  torrents  or  waterfalls. 
She  has  no  share  in  the  mighty  nature  which  has  begotten  the 
rugged  myths  of  the  North  ;  she  has  little  of  anything  that  stirs 
and  stimulates  the  personaUty. 

Russian  nature  has  two  opposite  characteristics :  amplitude  and 
vacuity — ^wealth  of  space  and  scarcity  of  contents  to  fill  it.  Huge 
areas  show  no  variety,  either  of  forms  or  colors.  In  live  and 
inanimate  nature  alike,  there  is  an  absolute  want  of  grandeur  and 
power.  Picturesqueness  is  either  totally  absent  or  appears  on 
such  a  minimum  scale  as  leaves  it  imperceptible  to  a  foreigner's 
eye.  Travelling  over  these  undulating  plains,  where  towns  and 
villages  are  sparsely  scattered,  produces  almost  the  same  feeling 
of  satiety  as  a  sea-voyage.  When  embarked  on  a  long  railway 
trip,  one  can,  just  as  on  board  a  steamer,  close  one's  eyes  at  night 
and  reopen  them  the  next  morning  without  being  made  aware  of 
a  change  of  locality.  Only  some  few  cities,  rising  in  tiers  on  the 
margin  of  rivers  or  lakes,  with  their  old  walls  and  colored 
cupolas,  such  as  Kief,  the  two  Nbvgorods,  Pskof,  Kazan,  present 
from  a  distance  an  imposing  front.  The  very  size  of  the  rivers 
impairs  their  beauty  ;  it  is  in  vain  that  one  bank  rises  into  high 
acclivity,  sometimes  overgrown  with  handsome  trees ;  no  matter 
how  fine  in  themselves,  they  are  always  too  low  for  the  width  of 
the  stream  and  look  crushed.  This  disproportion  mars  the  most 
beautiful  portions  of  the  Dniepr,  the  Don,  the  Volga.  For  instance, 
in  the  great  bend  the  latter  describes  between  Stavrbpol  and 
Syzr^,  where  "  Mother  Volga  "  opens  a  road  for  herself  through 


1/2      THE  EMPIRE  OF   THE    TSARS  AND   THE  RUSSIANS. 

a  range  of  steep  hills,  perhaps  equal  in  height  to  those  on  the 
Rhine,  the  Danube,  or  the  Nile,  the  width  of  the  river  exceeds  the 
height  of  the  hills,  so  they  look  dwarfed  and  the  effect  is  lost. 
Everything  in  Russia  suffers  from  this  want  of  proportion  between 
the  vertical  section  and  the  horizontal  plan  of  the  landscapes. 
Perhaps  the  most  truly  picturesque  scenery  is  presented  by  the 
calm  ponds  that  lie  in  the  desert  forests,  the  ravines  dug  in  the 
steppe  by  the  melting  snows,  the  wooded  glens  through  which  a 
slow  river  winds  its  silent  course. 

This  reliefless  soil  is  overspread  by  a  vegetation  lacking  both 
vigor  and  variety.  Nature  repeats  herself  everywhere, — same 
species,  same  plants,  same  trees.  The  similarity  that  pervades 
the  conditions  of  life  brings  about  the  sameness  of  live  creatures, 
while  the  rigor  of  the  climate  weakens  them.  Free  nature  in 
Great-Russia  shows  the  monotony  that,  in  other  parts  of  the 
world,  man  inflicts  on  nature  enslaved.  In  this  respect,  the 
wooded  zone,  which  comprises  the  vastest  and  oldest  portion  of 
Great-Russia,  has  not  much  the  advantage  of  the  zone  denuded 
of  trees.  The  forests  are,  if  an5rthing,  of  poorer  aspect  than  the 
steppe,  since  the  latter,  in  spring,  dons  its  luxuriant  grass  robe. 
Fine  trees  are  rare  and  scarcely  to  be  met  with  outside  of  certain 
favored  regions  of  the  centre  or  west.  The  species  are  the  same 
as  in  Sweden  and  Norway,  but  without  their  vigor.  Instead  of 
giving  vent  to  the  exuberance,  the  energy  of  an  ever-youthful 
nature,  these  forests  give  you  an  impression  of  powerlessness,  of 
indigence,  lassitude.  The  trees  now  are  poorly,  stunted,  small, 
and  old-looking,  now  again  they  are  slim  and  lanky,  without 
being  tall,  and  cast  but  scant  shade  on  the  bare  ground  beneath 
them.  What  most  strikes  the  eye  is  the  everlasting  contrast  of 
pine  and  birch,  with  their  respectively  reddish  and  white-bark 
trunks ;  the  pine  straight  and  bare  with  its  meagre  head,  the 
birch  with  its  slender  limbs,  with  its  minute  foliage. 

The  fields  offer  still  less  variety  than  the  woods.  The  soil  does 
not  receive  at  man's  hands  the  animation  and  variety  which  they 


THE  NATIONAL    TEMPERAMENT  AND   CHARACTER.      1 73 

impart  to  it  in  other  countries.  The  cultivated  crops  are  stricken 
with  the  same  monotony  as  the  spontaneous  vegetation.  You 
seldom  see  those  different  and  adjoining  crops  which  lend  such 
life  to  the  fields  in  the  West.  You  might  take  it  all  for  one  and 
the  same  field,  stretching  away  into  the  infinite,  were  it  not 
broken  now  and  then  by  a  strip  of  fallow  land.  No  hamlet,  no 
homestead,  not  even  isolated  farmhouses.  In  the  steppe  as  well 
as  in  the  forest,  the  Russian  husbandman  seems  afraid  of  finding 
himself  alone  in  the  midst  of  the  immensity  which  encloses  him 
on  every  side.  Community  of  landed  property,  in  general  use 
among  the  peasants,  increases  the  defect  of  nature ;  it  deprives 
Russian  rural  scenery  of  those  enclosures,  those  fancifully  shaped 
fences  which  go  for  much  in  the  charm  of  the  villages  in  England 
and  Normandy.  Thence  partly  come  the  sad  flatness,  the  dull 
wearisomeness  of  this  impersonal,  collective  country,  where  the 
fields  are  undivided  or  cut  up  into  long,  even,  and  symmetrical 
strips. 

This  liking  for  common  property,  for  association  and  the  kind 
of  organization  known  in  Russia  under  the  name  of  arf^l,  has 
frequently  been  ascribed  to  Slavic  blood.  It  is  more  likely  that 
it  has  its  chief  sources  not  so  much  in  race  as  in  nature  on  one 
hand,  and  in  a  given  stage  of  civilization  on  the  other.  The 
persistency  of  agricultural  communities  in  Great-Russia,  this 
desire  to  crowd  together,  to  live  in  close  vicinity,  is  certainly  not 
unconnected  with  the  cold  immensity  of  space  wherein  man,  if 
isolated,  feels  lost  and  powerless.* 

'  Isolation  in  the  midst  of  hostile  populations  has  the  same  effect,  and 
produced  among  the  Balkan  Slavs — Serbs,  Bosnians,  Bulgars — those  famous 
family  communes  or  "brotherhoods" — the  Zadrugas — to  which  those 
persecuted  branches  of  our  race  owe  the  preservation  of  their  national 
consciousness,  their  inspiriting  traditions,  and  —  more  prosaically  —  their 
safety.  Each  is  an  embryo  state,  a  survival  of  primeval  patriarchism  ;  a 
fossil,  but  instinct  with  life  and  with  beating  heart.  When  the  necessity  for 
them  ceases,  they  cease  to  exist,  naturally,  of  themselves  —  as  the  bodies  in 
the  old  Btruscan  tombs,  seemingly  unaffected  by  ages  of  sepulchral  gloom, 
crumble  to  dust  when  touched  by  a  ray  of  the  sun  of  the  living. 


174      "^^^  EMPIRE   OF   THE    TSARS  AND   THE  RUSSIANS. 

From  the  same  roots  springs  another  inclination  tending  in 
an  opposite  direction :  the  love  of  adventure,  of  travelling,  of 
vagrancy  —  what  foreigners  designate  by  the  high-sounding  word 
"  nomadic  tastes."  The  little  love  the  peasant  bears  to  the  sorry, 
thankless  soil  of  old  Moscovia  is  easily  accounted  for ;  besides,  if 
the  peasant  at  times  really  deserves  this  stricture,  it  should  be  set 
down  for  a  good  part  to  the  institutions,  serfdom,  and  the  current 
form  of  property-holding. 

There  is,  to  this  phenomenon,  another  reason  still,  which  also, 
though  indirectly,  is  bred  of  local  conditions,  and  weakens  the 
attachment  to  house  and  home  :  it  is  the  materials  of  which  the 
dwellings  are  built,  more  particularly  the  peasant's  cabin  —  the 
izb^,  —  and  the  consequent  frequency  of  conflagrations. 

In  Russia,  especially  Northern  Russia,  poor  in  stone  and 
abounding  in  forests,  in  that  region  which  the  historian  Soloviof 
'calls  "Wooden  Europe"  in  opposition  to  Western  or  "Stone 
Europe,"  all  villages,  from  the  peasants  cabin  to  the  church  and 
the  old  manor  house,  are  built  of  fir-wood.  So  were  most  towns 
until  quite  lately,  even  the  capitals.  In  such  a  country,  fire — 
"  the  Red  Rooster,"  such  being  the  homely  name  for  it  among  the 
people  —  is  a  terrible  foe,  both  for  the  individual  and  for  society. 
It  is  in  vain  that,  to  lessen  the  danger,  a  certain  distance  is  left 
between  the  houses  in  the  villages ;  they  are  about  certain  to 
bum  down  some  time  or  other,  every  one  of  them.  The  chances 
of  duration  of  a  dwelling  can,  according  to  the  region,  be  cal- 
culated with  as  much  accuracy  as  those  of  human  lives,  only 
that  the  dwelling's  term  is  frequently  considerably  the  shorter. 
One  feels  how  discouraging  must  be  the  prospect  of  destruction 
by  fire,  which  overshadows  a  family's  whole  life,  how  hampering 
to  any  thought  of  embellishment,  consequently  to  any  added 
comfort  or  improvement.  What  is  the  use  of  getting  attached  to 
the  frail  construction  of  wood  which  is  liable  to  be  consumed  by  a 
spark  and  a  breath  ?  So  the  peasants  often  listlessly  allow  their 
izhh  to  lean  off  its  basis,  as  though  ready  to  tumble  down,  and 


THE  NATIOMAL    TEMPERAMENT  AND   CHARACTER.      1 75 

appear  to  wait  for  the  flames  to  consume  it,  before  they  set  it 
straight. 

Independently  of  the  chances  of  fire,  the  facility  with  which 
the  peasant  of  the  north-country  constructs  his  house  is  not  apt 
to  inspire  him  with  sedentary  tastes.  A  peasant,  up  to  very  lately, 
was  able  to  build  a  house  in  a  few  weeks,  and  all  he  wanted  in 
the  way  of  tools  was  an  axe.  In  the  times  when  the  land  had  not 
been  so  denuded  of  woods,  the  izba^  though  otherwise  roomy  and 
comfortable,  could  be  replaced  almost  as  easily  as  the  Arab's 
hut,  or  gurbi.  That  may  have  been  another  of  the  causes  of 
those  * '  nomadic  tastes, ' '  much  too  freely  ascribed  to  the 
nation.  At  all  events,  the  frequency  of  fires,  which  have 
not  been  stopped  by  the  recently  created  insurance  offices, 
still  remains  an  obstacle  to  steadiness  of  habits,  to  the  feeling 
of  stability  and  permanency,  to  care  for  the  morrow.  This 
calamity,  ever  hanging  over  the  villages,  diminishes  the  love 
of  home,  a  feeling  which  has  everywhere  been  one  of  the 
greatest  factors  of  morality,  order,  and  economy,  and  which 
comes  more  naturally  to  the  Russian  than  to  any  other  people, 
as,  since  the  emancipation,  every  peasant  owns  the  house  in 
which  he  lives. 

As  a  rule,  the  people  of  the  North  are  less  attached  to  the  land 
than  those  of  the  South.  Emigration  is  less  hard  to  them ;  we 
see  that  in  Germany  and  England,  and  in  the  Scandinavian 
countries,  which,  from  a  not  very  dense  population,  send  oflf  each 
year  to  Canada  a  considerable  contingent  of  emigrants.  The 
Russian — at  least  the  peasant  —  does  not  easily  leave  his  country ; 
he  is  held  there  by  the  institutions,  by  his  prejudices,  by  his 
religion  ;  but  Russia  is  vast  enough  to  open  a  field  to  him  when 
the  wandering  himior  comes  over  him.  The  plain  lures  on  the 
pedestrian  ;  nothing  on  his  monotonous  way  invites  him  to  loiter, 
to  settle  down.  Hence,  in  the  Cosack  of  old  and  the  modem 
peasant,  the  ease  with  which  they  go  from  place  to  place,  an 
instinct  which  manifests  itself  in  so  many  ways  —  fairs,  pilgrim- 


176      THE  EMPIRE  OF  THE    TSARS  AND   THE  RUSSIANS. 

ages,  seeking  new  land,  —  and  which,  historians  tell  us,  was  one 
of  the  reasons  for  establishing  serfdom.* 

This  readiness  to  go  ahead,  at  random,  corresponds  to  a  moral 
tendency  perhaps  more  worthy  of  note,  though  less  generally 
taken  notice  of.  This  is  the  adventurous  inclination  of  the  Rus- 
sian nature,  often  longing  to  rush  blindly  into  the  most  feckless 
speculations,  impatient  of  obstacles,  not  shrinking  before  any 
extreme  of  boldness,  be  it  in  philosophy,  religion,  or  social 
science,  with  a  general  tolerance  or  indulgence  for  all  such 
flights  at  which  other  nations  stand  aghast.  Russian  thought 
is  frequently  not  more  conscious  of  limitations  than  are  Russian 
plains  and  horizons  ;  it  revels  in  the  boundless,  goes  straight  the 

•  From  earliest  times  land  used  to  be  given  as  a  reward  for  public  ser- 
vices. This  was  only  just,  since  public  servants  would  have  considered  the 
oflFer  of  pay  or  salary  as  an  insult.  They  defrayed  all  the  expenses  entailed 
by  their  respective  posts  out  of  their  personal  means,  and  some  charges  were 
so  onerous  as  to  leave  them  well-nigh  penniless — for  instance,  embassies 
to  foreign  lands,  or  even  only  to  other  Russian  princes'  courts,  with  the 
numerous  suite  and  the  representation  such  a  post  necessitated.  The  people 
on  the  estates  were  not  slaves  to  the  landlord,  though  owing  them  certain 
service  and  dues,  and  in  a  great  measure  dependent  on  their  pleasure  and  pro- 
tection, much  as  Roman  clients  of  the  early  times  on  their  patrons.  When 
they  were  or  thought  themselves  ill-used,  they  would  migrate  en  masse  to  the 
estates  of  some  other  landlord,  of  more  popular  fame,  till  some  lands  would 
become  overcrowded  and  some  remain  almost  deserted,  to  the  destruction 
not  only  of  the  owners*  interests,  but  of  the  country's  economic  balance. 
It  was  attempted  to  stem  the  current  by  an  ordinance,  forbidding  change  of 
land  throughout  the  year,  and  permitting  the  peasants  to  leave  their  home- 
steads on  one  single  day,  the  feast  of  St.  George,  26th  of  November,  when 
their  work  for  the  year  was  done  and  they  had  several  months  before  them 
in  which  to  eflfect  their  emigration  and  get  settled  on  the  new  land.  When 
even  this  restriction  did  not  suflBciently  reduce  the  peasant  migrations,  the 
decree  "attaching  them  to  the  glebe"  was  issued  by  Boriss  Godundf 
(contemporary  of  the  last  years  of  Elizabeth  and  the  first  of  James  I.),  an 
usurper  and  a  murderer,  yet  a  wise  and  careful  sovereign,  somewhat  after 
the  manner  of  Richard  III.  Thus  serfdom  came  into  being,  and  thence 
the  dread  of  leaving  free  play  to  the  supposed  "  migratory  instincts  "  of  the 
peasant,  a  dread  which  has  become  a  sort  of  obsession,  so  that,  even  now 
that  he  is  nominally  freed,  in  another  age  and  under  entirely  altered  con- 
ditions, the  main  feature  of  his  bondage — bondage  to  the  soil — is  still 
maintained. 


>«. 


THE  NATIONAL    TEMPERAMENT  AND   CHARACTER.      177 

whole  length  of  ideas  at  the  risk  of  encountering  the  absurd.  By 
this  logical  consistency,  this  longing  for  the  absolute,  the  Russian 
mind  betrays  a  certain  affinity  to  the  French  mind,  only  the  latter 
submits  to  correction  by  positive  practical  sense,  which  will  not 
suflFer  it  to  stray  beyond  the  domain  of  speculation.  Hence  the 
striking  contrast,  in  so  many  Russians,  of  great  audacity  in 
intellectual  spheres  joined  to  as  great  timidity  in  real  life,  of 
excessive  temerity  in  the  one  and  the  most  cautious  reserve  in 
the  other. 

The  levelness  of  the  soil  and  the  debility  of  the  Russian 
nature  ought  to  be  held  responsible  for  one  of  the  accusations 
most  frequently,  and  possibly  with  least  justice,  brought  up 
against  the  Russian  people  :  lack  of  individuality,  of  originality, 
want  of  creative  faculties.  The  history  of  the  nation  and  the 
tardiness  of  its  civilization  are  certainly  not  blameless  in  this  ;  but 
if — a  thing  we  may  be  permitted  to  doubt — if  this  defect  should 
prove  universal  and  incurable,  the  blame  should  first  of  all  be  laid 
on  the  country's  physical  nature.  If  he  is  lacking  in  personality, 
the  Russian,  in  this  particular  again,  reflects  the  characteristics 
of  the  land  of  his  birth.  To  its  poverty,  to  its  sameness,  he  is 
indebted  for  the  comparative  barrenness  of  his  mind.  This  land, 
indeed,  offers  but  few  images  to  the  poet,  or  colors  to  the  painter  ; 
it  does  not  lend  itself  to  a  renewal  of  impressions  and  ideas.*  If 
this  unproductiveness  is  to  be  corrected  in  the  future  by  the 
enlarged  horizons  which  are  opening  out  on  all  sides  into  the 

*  On  this  occasion  I  shall  make  bold  to  remark  on  the  great  and  pro- 
lific influence  brought  to  bear  on  Russian  literature  by  the  mountainous 
regions  remote  from  the  empire's  centre  and  more  or  less  lately  annexed  to 
it, — Crimea  and  Caucasus  more  particularly.  Owing  in  a  great  measure  to 
the  mistrust  of  a  suspicious  police,  always  ready  to  banish  writers  to  the 
extremities  of  the  empire,  national  poetry,  as  represented  by  Pushkin  and 
Lermontof,  has  found  there  a  source  of  inspiration  by  which  romanticism 
has  largely  profited.  In  this  respect  the  influence  of  the  Caucasus  on  Rus- 
sian poetry,  in  the  first  half  of  the  nineteenth  centmry,  might  be  likened  to 
that  which  the  Alps  exercised  on  French  and  German  literature  in  the 
eighteenth  century,  after  Rousseau. 


178      THE  EMPIRE   OF   THE    TSARS  AND   THE  RUSSIANS. 

world  of  science  and  culture,  is  it  not  the  land  itself  which  should, 
in  a  great  measure,  be  charged  with  the  long  inferiority  of  the 
Russian — nay,  the  Slav  genius,  such  as,  for  instance,  the  lack 
of  vitality  and  vigor  in  the  ancient  mythology  of  the  Russian 
Slavs,  when  compared  to  the  fables  of  the  Greeks  or  the  Scan- 
dinavians ?  * 

*  On  the  religious  and  mystical  proclivities  of  the  Russian  soul,  see  VoL 
ni.,  Book  L 


BOOK  III.      CHAPTER  HI. 

The  Variety  of  Russian  Nature  Lies  in  the  Alternations  of  Seasons — In  what 
Way  the  Contraries  of  Winter,  Spring,  and  Summer  have  Reacted  on  the 
National  Temperament — Russian  Character  is  all  in  Extremes,  as  the 
Climate — Its  Contradictions — Its  Flexibility — Its  Adaptability — An  His- 
torical Embodiment  of  the  National  Character. 


We  have  perhaps  dwelt  too  persistently  on  the  imiformity  of 
Russian  rural  scenery  ;  it  has,  after  all,  a  variety  of  its  own,  which 
powerfully  reacts  on  man,  and  helps  to  account  for  the  seeming 
contradictions  of  the  national  character.  This  principle  lies  not 
so  much  in  the  soil  as  in  the  climate. 

Variety  in  Russia,  and  the  beauty  and  picturesqueness  it  brings 
with  it,  come  more  from  weather  than  space,  from  the  succession 
of  seasons  more  than  from  that  of  scenery.  It  is  the  opposite  of 
what  we  see  in  southern  countries,  especially  tropical  ones,  where 
vegetation  and  the  outward  appearance  of  earth  and  sky  change 
little,  where  the  seasons  are  known  only  by  shadings,  and  life  flows 
on  amidst  these  conditions,  even  and  monotonous  in  tenor.  In 
the  North,  especially  in  a  continental  region  like  Great-Russia, 
the  seasons  forcibly  contrast  with  one  another ;  they  clothe  the 
earth  alternately  in  garments  violently  difiering  in  coloring. 
They  lend  nature  the  variety  of  aspect  which  enables  the  Russian 
to  imbibe  from  them  the  variety  of  impressions  and  feelings  he 
never  could  draw  from  the  soil.  Without  leaving  his  village,  he 
passes,  at  intervals  of  six  months,  through  climates  and  pictures 
as  different  as  though  he  were  oscillating  between  pole  and 
equator,  scaling  back  and  forwards  a  ladder  of  from  twenty-five 

179 


l8o      THE  EMPIRE  OF   THE    TSARS  AND   THE  RUSSIANS. 

to  thirty  degrees  of  latitude.  Such  changes  tell  no  less  on  the 
character  than  on  the  temperament,  on  the  imagpination  than  on 
the  mind.  In  Russia  each  season  has  its  own  labors,  festivities, 
and  pleasures  ;  each  has  its  own  songs,  and  even  sometimes  its  own 
dances.  In  fact,  the  seasons  hold  so  great  a  place  in  the  popular 
life  and  poetry,  that  they  might  very  well  serve  as  frames  to 
classify  many  of  the  piesni  sung  by  the  peasant.  When  we  wish 
to  describe  Russia,  it  is  not  enough  to  depict  the  soil ;  it  is,  above 
all,  the  seasons  which  must  be  portrayed.  Nothing  in  the  climate 
of  Western  Europe,  marked  as  the  contrast  is  there  between  winter 
and  smnmer,  can  give  an  accurate  idea  of  what  that  contrast  is  by 
the  Volga  or  the  Neva :  who  has  seen  Russia  under  one  only  of 
these  two  aspects  does  not  know  the  country. 

Of  Russian  seasons,  winter  is  the  longest  and  most  original ; 
in  its  very  monotony  partly  lies  its  picturesqueness  and  beauty. 
It  casts  over  that  lustreless  nature  the  most  gorgeous  of  bridal 
robes.  Snow  is  the  most  brilliant  of  ornaments,  and  its  cold 
whiteness,  by  turns  sparkling  and  dull,  is  enhanced  by  the  pearly 
iridescence  supplied  by  ice  and  frost.  Everything  vanishes  under 
the  snow, — land,  sea  and  rivers,  roads  and  fields ;  but  in  this 
viewless  uniformity  nature  assumes  a  majesty  with  which  the 
meagre  variety  of  spring  or  summer  never  could  invest  her. 
Under  this  thick  mantle  the  eye  detects  nothing  but  hollows  and 
swellings,  depressions  and  unevenness ;  but  this  monochrome 
ground-tone  receives  from  the  sun  the  most  dazzling  splendor, 
from  night  and  the  moon  the  tenderest,  the  daintiest  tints.  In  the 
glare  of  fine  sunny  winter  days  the  eye  can  scarcely  bear  the  even 
and  continuous  blaze ;  so  that  in  the  north,  where  the  snow  lies 
on  the  g^oimd  five  or  six  months  at  a  stretch,  there  are  nearly  as 
many  eye-diseases,  as  many  blind  people,  as  in  the  lands  of 
the  south. 

It  is  in  the  forests  that  the  beauties  of  winter  should  be  pref- 
erably sought.  There  rime  decks  the  birch  and  the  aspen  with 
crystal  flowers  more  brilliant  and  delicate  than  their  leaves  would 


THE  NATIONAL    TEMPERAMENT  AND  CHARACTER.      l8l 

be,  while,  on  the  background  of  white  snow,  shot  with  bluish 
streaks,  the  sombre  masses  of  the  pines  and  firs  take  on  warm, 
velvety  tones,  which  make  them  appear  almost  black.  At  night 
these  landscapes  loom  in  solemn  grandeur.  By  moonlight  the 
cold  plains,  in  their  spectral  pallor,  recall  to  the  mind  the  limbos 
of  Catholic  poets.  On  trees  or  monuments  the  snow  assumes 
fantastical  light  effects,  and  crowns  the  cupolas  of  the  churches 
with  a  mystic  halo.  On  moonless  nights  the  stars  scintillate  with 
the  vibrating  intensity  which  is  theirs  in  severe  frost.  The  gloom 
of  the  darkest  nights  is  lightened  by  the  reverberation  of  the  snow  ; 
it  is  then  as  though  the  light,  instead  of  coming  down  from  the 
sky,  were  rising  from  the  earth.  In  winter,  night  is  the  favorite 
time  for  sleigh-rides  and  country  picnicking.  Coming  out  of 
theatre  or  ball,  young  women,  wrapped  in  furs,  get  into  open 
sleighs,  and,  carried  along  by  swift  troykas  (the  Russian  teams  of 
three  abreast) ,  are  driven  ' '  to  the  Islands, "  or  to  some '  *  resort ' '  just 
outside  St.Petersburgh,  to  enjoy  the  threefold  sensation  of  fleetness, 
cold  air,  and  night.  In  the  streets  of  cities,  or  on  the  high-roads, 
the  sleighs  give  you  a  peculiar  impression,  due  to  the  combination 
of  motion  and  silence.  On  the  most  frequented  ' '  perspectives ' '  the 
horses,  stimulated  by  cold,  are  started  at  a  gallop,  or  at  the  high- 
stepping  trot  known  only  in  Russia.  Sleighs  and  vehicles  of  all 
kinds  crowd,  press,  pass  one  another  on  the  white  carpet  which 
kills  sound,  giving  to  the  eye  the  spectacle  of  life  at  its  wildest, 
while  the  ear  receives  the  impression  of  absolute  repose. 

The  long  winter  nights,  so  highly  prized  in  the  capitals,  are 
not  devoid  of  pleasure  for  the  peasants.  They  too  are  impelled 
to  assemble  together,  for  work  or  recreation.  Quite  lately,  in  the 
northernmost  provinces,  the  women  and  girls  used  to  flock  into 
the  most  spacious  izbh  of  the  village,  sometimes  clubbing  together 
to  rent  it  for  the  purpose.  In  the  wavering  light  of  the  lutchinas 
(a  kind  of  torches  made  out  of  resinous  chips)  *  they  held  their 

'  These  lutchinas  are  long  chips  of  pine  or  fir,  carefully  cut  from  the 
portions  of  the  logs  most  saturated  with  resin.     They  are  stuck  into  some 


1 82      THE  EMPIRE  OF  THE   TSARS  AND   THE  RUSSIANS. 

possidiilki,  the  rustic  "sociables"  of  a  people  whom  winter  dis- 
poses to  good  fellowship.  After  spinning  flax  or  wool,  talking 
all  the  while,  the  young  maidens,  now  joined  by  their  lovers  or 
betrothed,  begin  to  sing  some  of  those /z<?jn?  with  choral  burdens 
so  dear  to  the  Russian  people,  or  to  dance  one  of  their  slow  dances 
with  balalayka  accompaniment,  but  too  often  superseded  nowa- 
days by  the  vulgar  accordeon.* 

Spring  puts  an  end  to  these  village  parties,  by  restoring  to  the 
peasant  the  grass  and  sward  and  fetching  the  khorovbd  out  into  the 
open  air.  The  end  of  winter  or  the  first  dawn  of  spring  is,  of  all 
times  of  the  year,  the  dullest  and  most  disagreeable.  Instead  of 
the  green  grass,  a  sea  of  mud  ;  in  place  of  rural  scents,  the  stench 
of  the  thaw.  It  is  something  like  a  decomposition,  a  general  cor- 
ruption, of  nature,  coming  just  before  her  yearly  resurrection  ;  but 
how  thrilling  this  resurrection,  how  longed  for  and  joyfully  hailed 
after  the  long  winter  mourning  !  Nothing  in  moderate  climes  can 
give  an  idea  of  such  a  rejuvenation.  The  spring  recalls  to  life 
both  earth  and  water.     After  a  hundred  and  fifty  or  two  hundred 

fissure  in  the  wall,  those  interstices  between  the  natural  logs  which  are 
stopped  up — most  eflFectively  too,  so  closely  do  the  logs  fit — with  oakum 
and  moss.  The  other  end  of  the  lutchina  is  lit  and  a  tin  or  sheet-iron  drip- 
ping pan  placed  under  it  on  the  floor,  for  droppings  of  hot  resin,  sparks, 
and  bits  of  burnt  off  tinder.  The  name  of  this  primitive  torch,  which  begins 
to  grow  rare,  is  an  ambitious  one,  being  derived  from  lutch,  "  a  beam,  a  ray  " 
which  reproduces  exactly  the  Greek  lyki,  the  Latin  lux,  Italian  luce,  and 
the  Teutonic /mtA/,  English  light. — PossidUlki  literally  means  "sittings," 
fixjm  sidiiti  =  sedere,  "  to  sit" 

*  The  balalh^ka  is  the  national  strumming-instrument,  a  genuine  antique, 
the  body  nearly  triangular  in  shape.  The  stringfs  are  not  pinched,  only 
strummed  by  a  very  rapid  wrist  motion,  up  and  down,  with  the  ends  of  the 
fingers  (the  nail  side) ;  the  range  of  harmony  and  melody  is  limited  to  the 
tonic  and  fifth  or  dominant  chords,  and  the  effect  produced  is  as  rakishly 
merry  and  "  devil-may-carish  "  as  ever  drove  "blues"  away.  When  it  is 
used  as  an  accompaniment  to  chorus  singing  and  round-chain  dancing 
(khorbvdd J  in  the  silent  moonlight  in  the  middle  of  the  broad  village  street, 
the  girls  swaying  gracefully  from  side  to  side,  scarcely  stirring  their  long  be- 
ribboned  braids,  and  one  solo  voice  launching  into  space  on  a  high  end-note 
held  out  ad  infinitum,  then  broken  clean  off  without  grading, — the  whole  scene 
has  a  weird,  penetrating,  poetic  beauty  that  leaves  an  indelible  impression. 


THE  'NATIONAL    TEMPERAMENT  AND   CHARACTER.      1 83 

days  of  snow,  it  brings  back  to  light  the  green  earth  which  had 
totally  vanished  ;  it  reopens  the  rivers,  lakes,  and  gulfs,  converted 
by  winter  into  sullen,  dead  surfaces  ;  breaks  up  the  ice  that  fettered 
them ;  restores  their  color,  murmuring,  the  mobility  of  dancing 
waves ;  makes  them  over  new,  so  to  speak.  It  is  a  whole  element — the 
entire  liquid  world,  which  April  or  March  thus  reawakens  to  life. 
When  nothing  has  fallen  from  the  sky  but  snow,  even  the  first 
rains  bring  something  of  surprise  and  almost  joy,  not  unlike  the 
pleasure  experienced  in  Southern  countries  at  the  first  drops  of 
rain  after  long  weeks  of  heat  and  drought.  And  indeed  the 
children  greet  the  rain  and  welcome  it  by  traditional  songs. 
Together  with  the  rivers  and  all  the  watery  realm,  leaves  and 
flowers  come  to  life  once  more  in  forests  and  meadows,  preceded 
by  the  birds  who  had  fled  to  softer  climes  And  whose  return  is 
kept  daily  track  of  in  a  naive  popular  calendar  :  to-day  the  lark, 
to-morrow  the  swallow,  of  which  a  Russian  legend  will  have  that 
it  comes  down  firom  Paradise  and  brings  warmth  firom  thence. 
Nature,  in  all  her  forms,  appears  alive  and  young  in  proportion  to 
her  previous  deep  and  death-like  trance. 

Man  accepts  this  renewal  of  all  things  with  a  gladness  that 
would  be  inconceivable  elsewhere.  The  peasants  of  the  north, 
in  their  popular  songs,  celebrate  the  departure  of  winter  and 
return  of  spring  in  simple  poetic  strain.  From  hiU-top  or  house- 
roof  they  greet  his  coming  in  the  far  distance,  and  sing  to  him  as 
early  as  March  :  "  Come,  O  Spring,  beautiful  Spring,  come  with 
joy,  bring  flax  tall-grown  and  plenty  of  grain  !  "  In  many  parts 
of  the  country  they  call  on  spring  some  time  ahead,  bidding  it 
hasten,  with  rites  and  incantations  of  heathen  origin.  In  others 
the  festivities  that  celebrate  the  resurrection  of  nature  mingle 
with  those  held  for  the  resurrection  of  Christ,  as  though  the  one 
were  the  type  or  symbol  of  the  other.  The  first  day  of  May  is  a 
people's  holiday  almost  everywhere  :  tliej'  wander  about  the  woods, 
whence,  like  the  dove  of  the  Ark,  they  take  home  young  tree- 
sprouts  as  testifying  to  the  return  of  verdure  and  the  disappear- 


1 84      THE  EMPIRE  OF  THE    TSARS  AND   THE  RUSSIANS. 

ance  of  winter.  The  sun  and  the  tepid  vernal  breezes  give  a 
delicious  sensation,  perfect  in  itself.  The  body,  freed  from  its 
heavy  wrappings,  feels  lighter  as  well  as  younger. ' 

The  Russian  spring  is  brief.  From  the  nastiness  of  the  thaw 
it  quickly  passes  into  midsummer  heat ;  but  this  very  shortness 
enhances  its  eflFectiveness.  There  is  something  wonderful  in  the 
sudden  outbreak  of  vegetation  which  bursts  into  life  all  on  a 
sudden.  The  eye  all  but  follows  its  unfolding  day  by  day,  and 
the  laborer's  gladness  is  more  intense  as  he  watches  the  grain, 
which  he  has  just  laid  in  the  ground,  sprout,  rise,  color,  and 
ripen  all  in  six  weeks.  In  the  north  the  rapid  growth  of  the  days 
rivals  that  of  the  plants.  In  proportion  as  the  interval  is  greater 
from  the  long  winter  nights  to  the  long  summer  days,  the  days 
lengthen  by  a  more  notable  piece  in  each  twenty-four  hours. 
Thus  everything  combines — earth  and  water,  plants  and  light — 
to  make  more  intense  the  impression  of  universal  renovation. 


•  The  glad  feeling  of  deliverance,  of  revival,  forcibly  strikes  the  poetic 
vein  which  is  never  far  away  from  the  people's  heart,  and  sometimes  finds  a 
vent  in  the  quaintest  bits  of  word-painting.  One  morning  in  early  spring  I 
asked  my  maid  who  had  just  been  out  on  an  errand  what  kind  of  weather 
it  was.  "  Beautiful,"  she  answered,  her  eyes  still  dancing  with  the  exhilara- 
tion of  exercise  in  mild  unaggressive  air  ;  "there  is  a  wind,  but  it  is  so 
warm  when  it  blows  against  you,  it  wraps  you  round  as  with  a  fur  robe." 
I  knew  a  grand,  venerable  old  man,  of  mighty  build  and  majestic  simplicity 
of  mind  and  manner.  There  was  something  heroic,  epic  about  him.  He 
had  been  bom  a  serf,  but  manumitted  by  a  wise  master  in  time  to  make  some- 
thing of  his  life,  and  was  now  consciously  enjoying  the  last  years  of  it  in 
wealth  and  comfort,  the  father  of  many  sons  who  all  had  made  their  mark 
in  science,  art,  or  the  service  of  the  State.  He  was  so  near  the  end  that  even 
Solon  might,  after  some  demurring,  have  pronounced  him  a  happy  man. 
There  never  was  a  spring,  since  he  began  to  consider  each  added  year  as  one 
of  grace,  that  he  missed  walking  to  the  mighty  granite  embankment  of  the 
Neva, — and  as  he  gazed  on  the  great  floes  of  Ladoga  ice  drifting  and  dancing 
down  the  current,  jostling  and  crunching  one  another  with  the  cool  slushy 
sound  of  melting  cracked  ice  in  motion,  under  the  turquoise  blue  of  the 
cloud-flecked  sky  and  on  the  deeper  blue  of  the  boisterous  river,  he  bared  his 
head  and,  crossing  himself  with  the  broad  gesture  of  the  Russian  peasant 
at  prayer,  spoke  aloud  :  "I  thank  Thee,  Lord,  that  Thou  hast  vouchsafed 
to  let  Thy  servant  behold  Thy  spring  once  more  !  " 


THE  NATIONAL    TEMPERAMENT  AND   CHARACTER.      1 8$ 

The  old-time  Russians  did  not  count  this  fleeting  spring  as  a 
season  ;  they  acknowledged  only  three :  autumn,  winter,  and 
summer.  Summer,  with  some  of  the  inconveniences  it  entails  on 
.southern  countries,  such  as  heat — at  times  oppressive — dust,  and 
often  drought,  brings  also  some  of  the  southern  loveliness:  the 
beauty  of  sky  and  atmosphere,  the  mildness  of  the  air,  the  trans- 
lucent haziness  of  the  horizon,  the  coolness  of  shade  and  waters, 
the  delicious  freshness  of  earliest  morning  and  of  the  last  hours 
of  eve.  In  the  northern  half  of  the  empire,  summer  has  pictures 
exclusively  its  own,  which  fancy  could  not  conjure  without  having 
enjoyed  them  in  reality.  The  nights  of  the  southern  summer, 
with  their  soft  temperature  and  their  diaphanous  sky,  are  beauti- 
ful ;  but  those  of  the  north  are  no  less  so,  and  surprise  you  more. 
No  brush  could  render  the  delicacy  of  their  tints,  the  fineness  of 
their  gradations.  On  those  nights  on  which  the  sun  scarce  dips 
below  the  horizon,  the  lively  colors  of  a  spring  sunset  are  suc- 
ceeded by  opalescent  and  pearly  tints  which  might  belong  to 
another  planet.  The  light,  in  paling,  assumes  a  semblance 
almost  ethereal.  It  is  neither  night  nor  day,  neither  dawn  nor 
twilight — or  rather  it  is  both.  As  we  near  the  Polar  Circle,  sun- 
set and  dawn  follow  each  other  more  nearly,  in  both  space  and 
time.  Towards  midnight,  the  pallor  of  the  one  and  the  blush  of 
the  other  are  very  close  together  at  both  ends  of  the  north,  light- 
ing up  the  heavens  simultaneously,  as  though  mutually  reflecting 
each  other. 

Under  the  6oth  degree — the  latitude  of  St.  Petersburgh — there 
is  already  no  night  at  the  end  of  June,  although  not  until  we 
reach  the  66th  degree,  just  above  Arkhangelsk,  do  we  actually  see 
the  sun  on  the  horizon  at  midnight.  These  weird  nights,  so 
soothing  to  the  eye  and  imagination,  have  in  them  something 
exciting  to  the  nerves  ;  they  seem  to  repudiate  sleep.  Therefore, 
in  order  to  better  enjoy  the  long  evenings,  many  Russians  take 
a  siesta  in  the  daytime,  as  do  all  southern  peoples.  There  is 
in  this  continuous  daylight  a  subtle  stimulant  which  renders  it 


1 86       THE  EMPIRE   OF   THE    TSARS  AND   THE  RUSSIANS. 

quickly  wearisome  to  foreigners  and  makes  them  wish  for  the 
return  of  normal  nights.  They  do  return  soon,  and  begin  to  in- 
crease just  as  fast  as  they  had  decreased.  Already  in  the  numer- 
ous and  wholly  pagan  rites  that  celebrate  the  summer  solstice  on 
St.  John's  Eve,  through  the  joyful  songs  in  praise  of  the  sun, 
arrived  at  the  zenith  of  his  ascent,  some  sad  strains  are  heard, 
mourning  beforehand  his  rapid  descent  towards  winter. 

With  the  lengthening  nights  autumn  returns,  the  least  con- 
spicuous and  least  original  of  Russian  seasons,  but  not  the  least 
beautiful.  The  forests  don  those  hues,  warm  and  varied,  whose 
richness  summer  cannot  match.  The  frequent  atmospheric 
changes  lend  to  the  sky  tones  of  a  sombre  and  fitful  beauty,  and, 
on  the  boughs  in  the  woods,  or  on  the  grass  of  the  steppes,  the  first 
morning  frosts  descend,  shedding  over  the  scenery  charms  scarcely 
familiar  to  any  eye  but  that  of  the  early  huntsman.  Moreover, 
there  is  in  this  decadence  of  light  and  vegetation  a  feeling  of  sad- 
ness, a  poetic  vein  of  mild  melancholy,  which  suits  well  with  this 
northern  nature.  Autumn  always  lasts  a  long  time  ;  the  days 
shorten  ;  the  leaves  fall ;  the  birds  depart  on  their  migration, 
species  by-  species, — the  cuckoo,  the  most  sensitive  to  cold,  some- 
times starts  as  early  as  the  end  of  July  ; — the  rains  come,  then 
snow  ;  but  winter,  the  genuine  Russian  winter,  does  not  arrive 
until  the  earth  lies  enfolded  in  the  heavy  shroud  which  spring 
alone  will  lift. 

All  these  vicissitudes  of  the  seasons  are  strongly  felt  by  the 
Russians,  and  nobody  has  rendered  them  more  beautifully  by 
word  and  brush.  Not  a  shading  of  that  pallid  nature,  not  a  gleam 
of  light  or  color  in  the  sky,  not  a  deepening  shadow  on  the  face 
of  the  earth,  has  escaped  their  eye,  not  a  mvumur  their  ear.  "  By 
nothing  but  the  motion  of  the  leaves,  I  could,  with  closed  eyes, 
tell  the  season  or  the  month  of  the  year,"  says  one  of  their  writers, 
somewhere.*    They  have  lovingly  depicted  this  land  of  theirs, 

*  Ivan  Torgu^nief,  the  greatest  word-painter  amidst  the  great  Russian 
novelists. 


THE  NATIONAL    TEMPERAMENT  AND   CHARACTER.      187 

whicli,  in  the  long  run,  does  assume  a  penetrating  charm  for  any- 
body that  has  once  felt  it,  like  a  face  the  beauty  of  which  lies  in 
the  expression.  Their  painters  have  portrayed  it  in  those  alterna- 
tions of  the  seasons  which,  at  few  months'  interval,  oflfer  to  their 
brush  diflferent  worlds.  Hence  the  twofold  talent  which  often 
strikes  one  in  their  pictures,  the  feeling  of  color  and  that  of 
shading, — the  comprehension  of  great  lines  and  large  masses,  and 
that  of  detail  and  accessories.  It  is  because  in  these  vast  plains, 
usually  devoid  of  successive  plans,  there  is  not  much  of  a  medium 
between  the  general  effects  and  the  isolated  ones, — between  the 
long-stretched  forest  and  a  clump  of  trees, — between  the  boundless 
steppe  and  a  bunch  of  shrub.  As  immensity  draws  the  eye  till  it 
loses  itself  in  the  horizon,  so  every  slightly  conspicuous  detail  irre- 
sistibly attracts  attention  in  the  end.  Nothing  could  render  the 
grandeur  of  a  sunset  in  the  southern  steppes,  say  between  the 
Azof  and  Caspian  Seas.  At  the  same  time,  on  these  level  plains, 
as  on  an  empty  stage,  every  human  figure,  every  object,  stands  out 
with  singular  vigor  on  the  uniform  immensity  ;  a  tree,  a  hut,  a 
man,  a  horse,  assume  an  unusual  importance,  and  almost  appear 
larger  than  nature  in  size.  It  is  thus,  to  make  use  of  a  homely 
simile,  that  the  Russians  have  a  rare  facility  to  contemplate  nature 
through  both  ends  of  their  spy-glass,  to  see  it  by  turns  as  a  near- 
sighted person  sees  it  or  a  far-sighted  one.  With  this  faculty 
they  possess  the  gift  of  accuracy,  of  hitting  the  right  expression. 
Things  appear  to  them  precise  and  lifelike — a  gift  which  they 
derive  from  that  same  nature  whose  forms  and  colors  impress 
themselves  by  perpetual  iteration  or  are  brought  into  relief  by 
their  isolation. 

The  influence  of  these  vicissitudes  of  seasons  makes  itself  felt 
especially  in  the  temperament  and  the  character  of  the  nation. 
To  them  the  Russian  owes  the  flexibility,  the  elasticity  of  organs 
which  have  been  fashioned  by  the  alternations  of  winter  and 
summer,  so  as  to  adapt  themselves  to  any  climate  ;  to  them 
he  is  indebted  for  his  intellectual  plasticity,  the  ease  with  which 


l88      THE  EMPIRE  OF  THE    TSARS  AND   THE  RUSSIANS. 

he  passes  from  one  idea  to  another,  a  faculty  which  matches  the 
former,  and  makes  moral  as  easy  as  physical  acclimatization 
wherever  he  may  be. 

To  these  oppositions  of  climate  I  am  tempted  to  ascribe  also 
whatever  at  times  appears  in  the  Russians  ill-regulated,  exagger- 
ated, disorderly,  unbalanced.  They  are  frequently  accused  of 
want  of  originality.  Now  we  should  arrive  at  an  understanding 
as  to  what  is  meant  by  that  word,  that  rebuke.  If  they  lack 
originality  in  intellect,  in  ideas,  on  the  other  hand  they  have  a 
great  deal  of  it  in  character,  mind,  and  expression.  Russian 
poetry,  novels,  music,  often  show  remarkable  originality.  What, 
perhaps,  the  Russians  are  wanting  in — or,  more  correctly,  what 
time  and  education  have  prevented  their  showing,  as  yet,  as  much 
as  some  other  nations — is  the  genius  of  invention.  Far  from 
being  generally  deficient  in  individuality,  the  Russian  often 
abounds  in  it — in  feelings,  taste,  and  habits.  He  is  firequently 
original,  in  the  new  and  commonly  accepted  sense  of  the  word, — 
in  tastes  and  manners.  This  originality,  indeed,  often  degenerates 
into  peculiarities,  eccentricities,  nay,  into  insanity.  Ivan  the  Ter- 
rible, Peter  the  Great,  Paul  I. ,  are  appalling  instances  in  point. 
If,  among  sovereigns,  this  defect  shotdd  be  laid  to  the  account  of 
personal  temperament  or  of  that  unwholesome  effect  of  absolute 
power  which,  among  the  Roman  Caesars  has  produced  so  many 
monstrosities,  signs  of  the  same  disposition  can  be  traced  far 
below  the  level  of  the  throne.  It  would  be  an  easy  task  to  report 
many  a  trait  of  Russian  originality,  and  in  the  course  of  over  two 
centimes  more  than  one  nobleman  in  Petersburgh  or  Moscow, 
besides  Suvbrof  or  Rostoptchin,  has  made  for  himself  a  European 
reputation  in  this  line.  Eccentricity  and  singularity,  in  fact,  are, 
on  the  whole,  less  rare  in  northern  countries  than  in  southern 
ones, — in  England  and  the  United  States  than  in  Italy  or  Spain. 
In  the  Russia  of  the  times  of  serfdom,  moreover,  eccentricity  could 
also  be  bred  of  the  accumulation  of  riches  in  few  hands,  of  the 
inordinate  license  afifected  by  the  owners  of  vast  wealth,  to  whom 


THE  NATIONAL    TEMPERAMENT  AND  CHARACTER,      1 89 

the  habit  of  indulging  every  whim  and  wish  was  like  another 
kind  of  absolute  royalty,  who  became  as  quickly  satiated  and 
blasi,  and,  to  force  some  new  sensation,  exhausted  the  round  of 
fancies. 

In  Russia  the  absence  of  political  life,  the  frequently  enforced 
idleness  of  talent,  have  for  a  long  time  done  their  work  of  warping 
the  most  active  faculties.  Even  in  the  low  classes  the  weight  of 
want  and  bondage  has  not  always  suppressed  eccentricity ;  only  it 
assumes  a  religious  disguise.  It  were  a  vain  attempt  to  try  and 
catalogue  all  the  singular  sects  with  which  the  dregs  of  Russian 
society  teem,  for  there  is  no  extravagance  too  great  to  attract 
adepts.  In  spite  of  appearances,  such  abnormal  or  inordinate 
propensities,  in  religion  or  daily  life,  are  not  irreconcilable  with 
a  practical  turn  of  mind  or  realistic  common-sense  in  a  nation  any 
more  than  in  an  individual.  The  most  positive,  most  matter-of- 
fact  people — the  American  nation — are  a  proof  in  point. 

If  the  aflSnities  between  man  and  climate  easily  turn  to  fancifiil- 
ness,  there  is,  between  the  Russian  temperament  and  Russian 
nature,  as  manifested  in  the  opposition  of  the  seasons,  a  likeness 
not  easily  to  be  denied.  Both  are  immoderate,  both  easily  rush 
from  one  extreme  to  another.  Alternations  of  all  kinds,  changes 
of  moods,  ideas,  feelings,  are  always  strongly  marked  ;  a  wide 
margin  is  open  to  the  oscillations  of  mind  and  heart ;  the  various 
stages  of  life  differ  perhaps  more  than  anywhere  else.  The 
Russian  soul  easily  passes  from  torpor  to  buoyancy,  from  meek- 
ness to  wrath,  from  submission  to  revolt ;  in  all  things  it  appears 
to  naturally  incline  to  extremes.  By  turns  submissive  and  irrita- 
ble, apathetic  and  impetuous,  jovial  and  morose,  indifferent  and 
passionate,  the  Russian,  perhaps  more  than  any  other  people,  runs 
all  the  gamut  of  cold  and  heat,  of  calm  and  tempest.  The  Russian 
is  prone  to  sudden  infatuation,  to  unbridled  whims,  to  impulses 
and  transports  of  passion  for  things  either  serious  or  futile — an 
opinion,  a  writer,  a  singer,  a  dancer,  a  fad  of  fashion.  This  dis- 
position makes  itself  felt  as  well  in  public  as  in  private,  in  national 


igO      THE  EMPIRE  OF   THE    TSARS  AND   THE  RUSSIANS. 

as  in  individual  life,  all  the  more  that  it  is  indirectly  favored 
by  the  political  riginu,  which,  forbidding  one  day  a  thing 
it  tolerates  the  next,  seems  to  encourage  to-day  what  it  will 
proscribe  to-morrow. 

The  individual,  society,  the  government,  seem  equally  inclined 
to  think,  to  will,  to  act  by  fits  and  starts,  so  that  periods  of  fever, 
energy,  and  confidence  are  closely  followed  by  spells  of  flat  calm, 
of  inertia,  of  languor,  during  which  a  feeling  of  despair,  a  lack  of 
interest  in  things  in  general,  overcasts  the  soul.  This  accounts  for 
many  of  the  contradictions  and  alternations  of  Russian  life.  In  the 
same  persons  or  in  the  same  sphere  there  is  the  strangest  inter- 
weaving and  intertangling  of  doubt  and  conviction,  of  indifference 
and  enthusiasm,  and  initiative  in  ideas  is  often  seen  attended  by 
routine  in  action. 

Being  made  like  that,  the  Russian  at  times  yields  to  infatua- 
tion, to  impulses  at  which  he  is  the  first  to  wonder.  The  Eastern 
war  of  1877-78  is  a  striking  instance  of  this.  Owing  to  the  lack 
of  liberty  and  the  want  of  interest  in  the  political  life  at  home  ; 
owing  also  to  the  urging  of  a  press  which  enjoys  getting  excited 
about  something  with  impunity,  and,  lastly,  to  the  need  of  emotion 
vaguely  felt  by  a  public  disgusted  with  the  emptiness  of  daily  life 
and  made  hungry  by  a  system  of  dieting  and  fasting,  a  sceptical 
and  chaffing  society,  lately  almost  indifferent  to  the  sufferings  of 
the  Balkan  Slavs,  becomes  in  the  course  of  a  few  months  fired  with 
an  ardent  and  irresistible  enthusiasm  for  the  Serbs  and  Bulgars. 
In  the  face  of  the  reluctance  manifested  by  the  sovereign  and 
ministers,  in  spite  of  the  bantering  incredulity  expressed  in  the 
drawing-rooms  of  Petersburgh,  Russia,  stirred  up  from  high  to 
low,  starts  on  a  sort  of  crusade,  and  wages  a  great  national  war  in 
which  no  one  would  have  believed  two  or  three  years  before, — a 
war  which,  the  suspicious  attitude  of  the  West  notwithstanding, 
was  decided  on  not  so  much  out  of  political  calculations  as  from 
a  sudden  explosion  of  feelings  long  suppressed  and  eager  to 
find  a  vent. 


THE  N-ATIOJSTAL    TEMPERAMENT  AND   CHARACTER.       I9I 

This  mobility,  this  impressionability,  so  often  pointed  out  in 
Slavs,  especially  Russians  and  Poles,  this  lack  of  balance,  of 
measure,  so  repeatedly  deplored  by  the  Russian  writers  them- 
selves, show  too  great  an  affinity  with  a  climate  persistently  given 
to  excesses  not  to  be  derived  therefrom,  at  least  in  part.  The 
successive  oppositions  of  nature  in  her  various  phases  seem  to 
have  stamped  their  impress  on  man.  We  should  not  wonder 
therefore  at  the  Russians  exposing  to  view  so  many  contrasts,  or 
our  being  continually  forced  into  contradiction  when  we  speak 
of  them. 

In  the  Great-Russian,  moreover,  this  changefulness  is  usually 
moderated  by  practical  sense,  and,  like  a  child,  being  but  young 
as  a  nation,  he  can  correct  it  by  training,  age,  and  experience. 
To  look  at  it  more  closely,  this  defect  may,  after  all,  turn  out  to 
be  the  obverse  side  of  a  quality,  itself  ascribable  to  climate 
no  less  than  to  the  Slavic  trait  of  malleability.  I  mean  that 
facility  of  adaptation,  that  faculty  of  comprehension,  which  so 
eminently  distinguish  the  Russian,  and  for  which  Herzen  coined 
the  word  "receptivity."  This  imitative  instinct,  this  innate 
talent  of  assimilation,  so  striking  in  the  cultivated  Russian,  has 
sometimes  been  doubted  when  discussing  the  common  people. 
Yet  we  surely  can  trace  it  even  in  the  latter  in  the  technical 
sphere,  the  only  one  ordinarily  open  to  the  peasant,  in  that  versa- 
tility which  renders  all  work  easy  to  him,  and  frequently  enables 
him  to  ply  ten  crafts  at  once ;  lastly,  in  that  suppleness  of  the 
Russian  soldier  and  the  Cosack,  so  promptly  ready  to  meet  all 
demands  of  either  war  or  peace.  Half  hidden  and  as  though 
paralyzed  in  the  lower  classes  by  the  monotony  of  their  existence, 
by  habitual  routine,  attachment  to  ancient  customs  or  half-oriental 
prejudices,  this  quality  takes  its  free  development  in  the  higher 
classes,  among  the  Russians  who  have  shaken  themselves  free  of 
popular  prejudice ;  there  it  unfolds  itself  in  all  spheres  at  once — 
in  ideas,  manners,  customs,  literature,  even  language.  In  this 
respect,  as  in  a  great   many  others,  the  Russian  is  the  exact 


192      THE  EMPIRE  OF   THE    TSARS  AND   THE  RUSSIANS. 

opposite  of  the  Englishman.  The  suppleness  of  his  intellect 
appears  to  be  unlimited,  and  the  ease  with  which  he  appropriates 
may  have  been  an  obstacle  to  the  spontaneous  development  of 
national  originality. 

With  its  inconveniences  and  its  advantages,  this  flexibility 
remains  one  of  the  most  marked  features  of  the  Russian  nature. 
Were  it  not  that  it  always  is  a  somewhat  arbitrary  proceeding  to 
establish  a  hierarchy  among  simultaneous  faculties  and  intercon- 
nected moral  leanings,  one  might  say  that  this  is  the  Russian's 
pre-eminent  faculty.  It  shows  in  every  part  of  him,  in  his  intel- 
lect as  much  as  in  his  body  and  organs,  all  of  which  are  tempered 
and  tested  by  those  trying  alternations  of  the  seasons  as  by  a  sort 
of  gymnastics,  to  which  nature,  stem  mother,  subjects  him  every 
year.  Hence  the  success  of  the  Great-Russian  in  colonizing  the 
vast  plains  of  his  continent,  spreading  northward  and  southward 
with  an  almost  equal  facility  of  acclimatization  under  every  or  any 
sky  ;  hence,  in  the  course  of  the  last  two  centtuies,  the  surprises 
g^ven  to  aged  and  scornful  Dame  Eiu'ope  by  a  people  so  long 
considered  as  an  alien  in  the  European  world,  and  rebellious 
to  its  civilization ;  hence,  lastly,  the  diflficulty  for  the  observer 
of  discerning  what  is  possible  in  Russia  from  what  is  not. 
For  this  faculty  of  adaptation,  confined  until  now  to  private 
life,  to  external  politeness,  to  arts  and  sciences,  can  any  day 
extend  into  novel  spheres,  such  as  government,  institutions, 
pubHc  liberties. 

Should  an  historical  type  be  asked  for,  a  living  type  of  this 
Russian  nature,  which  the  weight  of  events  has  so  long  hindered 
from  blossoming  out  into  great  men, — there  is  the  Tsar  Peter  the 
Great.  All  through  his  semi-barbarism,  in  his  very  excesses  and 
contradictions,  with  his  foibles  and  infatuations,  with  his  innovat- 
ing recklessness  and  his  practical  good-sense,  his  scorn  of  obstacles 
and  his  positive  instinct,  his  wide  open  mind  and  his  marvellously 
cunning  hand,  his  universal  aptitude  for  all  crafts  and  callings, 
Piotr  Alex6yevitch  remains  the  national  type/ar  excellence.     Few 


THE  NATIONAL    TEMPERAMENT  AND   CHARACTER.       I93 

of  the  national  defects  are  lacking  in  the  great  reformer,  and 
many  have  reached  in  him  the  limits  of  the  possible  ;  few  of  the 
national  qualities  but  come  to  light  in  him,  and  several  have,  in 
him,  risen  to  genius.  The  imperial  carpenter  of  Zaandam  may- 
seem  to  us  of  a  harder  and  stronger  temper  than  most  of  his 
countrymen,  but  he  is  unmistakably  wrought  out  of  the  same 
metal.*  In  the  g^eat  reformer,  the  two  extremes  of  the  nation, 
the  two  Russians,  so  different  even  yet,  that  the  one  does  not 
always  appear  to  be  evolved  from  the  other, — the  vtujik  and  the 
cultured  nobleman,  the  former  with  his  stolid,  massive  stubborn- 
ness, the  latter  with  his  alert  and  mobile  suppleness,  seem  com- 
bined and  merged  together,  as  though  to  correct  and  complete  one 
another.  Peter  has  shown  that  Russian  flexibility  need  take 
nothing  from  energy,  that  Slavic  ductility  can  abide  together  with 
solidity. 

If  one  is  astonished  at  finding,  in  on&  people,  so  many  traits  of 
character  different  or  even  opposite,  one  can,  in  the  person  of 
Peter  the  Great,  behold  them  all  united  and  centred  in  one  man. 
This  converging,  in  one  individual,  of  so  many  qualities  and  defects, 
so  many  features  scattered  through  a  nation,  has  shaped  a  queer 
and  well-nigh  monstrous  man,  but,  at  the  same  time,  one  of  the 
most  mighty,  most  enterprising,  the  best  endowed  for  life  and 
action,  whom  the  world  has  seen.  No  other  nation  can  boast  of 
owning  a  g^eat  man  in  whom  it  can  embody  all  itself,  who,  in  his 
very  vices,  stands  out,  a  colossal  incarnation  of  its  genius.  Peter, 
the  pupil  and  imitator  of  foreigners, — Peter,  who  seemed  to  have 
set  himself  the  task  of  violently  breaking  his  people's  nature,  and 
who  has  been  regarded  by  the  old-time  Moscovites  as  a  sort  of 
Ante-Christ, — Peter  is  the  Russian,  the  Great-Russian  par  excel- 
lence. Standing  before  his  face,  one  may  say  that  sovereign  and 
nation  explain  each  other.  A  nation  that  resembles  such  a  man 
is  sure  of  a  great  future.     If  it  is  apparently  wanting  in  some  of 

*  Or  he  could  not  have  succeeded,  even  with  his  force  of  will  and  sum- 
mary methods. 


194      THE  EMPIRE  OF   THE    TSARS  AND    THE  RUSSIANS. 

those  highest  or  most  refined  qualities  on  which  mankind  prides 
itself,  it  owns  those  which  give  power  and  political  greatness.* ' 

*  For  personality,  energy,  consistency, — qualities  too  often  denied  the 
Russians,  three  men,  vastly  dififerent,  might  be  mentioned  from  among  our 
own  contemporaries :  N.  Milidtin,  G.  Samdrin,  and  Prince  V.  Tcherkassky. 
See  Un  Homme  d'etat  Russe,  dfapris  sa  Correspondance  Inidite  ("A 
Russian  Statesman,  from  his  Unpublished  Correspondence  "). 

'  This  chapter  is  one  of  great  beauty  —  of  an  order  of  beauty  one  would 
least  have  looked  for  from  an  historian  and  political  writer.  And  the  com- 
prehension of  the  Russian  nature,  both  human  and  physical,  the  insight 
into  the  connection,  the  interdependence  of  both,  must  be  a  revelation  to 
foreign  readers.  Mr.  Beaulieu  has  here  said  things  that  no  one  said  before 
him,  because  he  has  seen  things  that  must  remain  a  sealed  book  to  any  but 
a  poet's  eye,  sharpened  by  science  and  scholarship. 


BOOK  III.    CHAPTER  IV. 

The  Riissian  Character  and  Nihilism — Origin  and  Nature  of  Nihilism — Its 
Three  Successive  Phases — By  What  Sides  it  Belongs  to  the  National  Tem- 
perament— Combination  of  Realism  and  Mysticism — In  What  Sense 
Nihilism  is  a  Sect — Manner  of  Nihilistic  Propaganda — Radical  Instincts 
of  the  Russian  Mind — ^The  Slav  Woman  and  the  "  Woman  Question  "  in 
Russia. 

By  its  rigor  and  demands  the  Russian  climate  inclines  man  to 
realism  ;  by  the  vastness  and  sameness  of  her  plains,  by  her  im- 
mensity and  poverty,  nature  predisposes  him  to  mysticism  and 
melancholy.  Therein  lies  the  key  to  many  of  the  contrasts  with 
which  the  Russian  nature  abounds.  Of  this  conflict  or  this  union 
of  tendencies  often  opposed  to  one  another  or  apparently  irrecon- 
cilable, several  illustrations  might  be  found  in  the  bulk  of  the 
people  themselves,  in  the  ignorant  sects  of  Great-Russia.  We 
will  take  instead  as  a  specimen  a  phenomenon  not  less  curious, 
although  less  spontaneous,  less  thoroughly  native.  This  is  the 
development  called  "nihilism,"  or,  as  the  Russians  pronounce  it : 
nighilhm^ 

lyike  nearly  all  the  theoretical  conceptions  of  the  Russians, 
"nihilism,"  in  its  principle,  is  simply  an  importation  from  the 
West.  It  was  from  Europe  and  especially  from  German  philosophy 
that,  under  Nicolas,  the  first  intellectual  seeds  came  into  Russia 
of  that  spirit  of  negation  and  revolt  which,  in  the  land  of  autocracy, 

'  The  letter  h  is  lacking  in  the  Russian  alphabet,  and  the  letter^  does 
duty  for  it  in  words  of  foreign  extraction.  The  Little-Russians  sound  it  with 
a  strong  guttural  aspiration,  which  makes  a  sort  of  compromise  between  the 
two.    Concerning  the  pronunciation  of  the  »,  see  note  3,  on  p.  18, 

195 


196      THE  EMPIRE   OF   THE    TSARS  AND    THE  RUSSIANS. 

under  the  shades  of  a  secular  absolutism,  found  a  soil  more  apt 
than  their  own  original  native  sod.  It  was  from  the  latest  sons  of 
Kant  and  the  revolutionary  children  of  the  peaceable  and  conserva- 
tive Hegel,  from  the  most  extreme  representatives  of  the  Hegelian 
Left,  that  the  first  ancestors  or  first  apostles  of  Russian  nihilism 
drew  their  inspirations,  if  not  their  theories.  In  all  that  regards 
ideas  and  views,  negations  and  dreams,  nihilism  is  nothing  but  a 
corrupted  extract  from  French  philosophy,  criticism,  and  socialistic 
schools.  The  interest  and  orig^ality  of  Russian  radicalism  are 
not  there  to  be  found,  not  in  speculations  and  abstractions  un- 
familiar to  most  young  adepts  of  contemporary  nihilism.  What 
the  latter  holds  of  truly  original,  it  owes  to  Russia's  political  and 
to  her  economic  situation,  to  social  and  religious  status,  and  above 
all  to  the  national  temperament. 

At  bottom,  nihilism  is  simply  the  Russian  form  of  the  negative 
and  revolutionary  spirit  of  the  age.  Far  from  being  an  aflfection 
peculiar  to  Russia,  it  is  a  moral  epidemic  of  which  the  germ  has 
been  imported,  and  with  which  all  Europe,  nay,  the  whole  civil- 
ized world  is  more  or  less  ajQfected  ;  only  the  symptoms  and  the 
consequences  of  the  disease  vary  with  each  people,  according  to 
the  patient's  age,  constitution,  and  habits.  If,  in  the  low  plains 
of  the  Neva  or  the  Volga,  the  attacks  of  this  revolutionary  fever, 
nowadays,  become  endemic,  offer  peculiar  symptoms,  that  is  due 
to  the  people's  idiosyncrasies  and  also  to  their  diet. 

Nihilism,  which  has  made  so  much  noise  from  1878  to  1883,  is 
not  exactly  a  novelty.  It  can  register,  even  under  this  uncouth 
name,  a  long  existence,  for  it  is  not  necessarily  associated  with 
revolutionary  conspiracies  or  with  political  crimes.  It  is  anterior 
to  all  such  attempts,  and  may  survive  them  or  again  become,  as 
formerly,  a  stranger  to  them,* 


*  Among  the  conspirators,  many  and  not  nnfrequentlj  the  most  enter- 
prising are  of  Jewish  extraction.  This  gave  occasion  to  certain  Russian 
papers,  happy  to  find  an  alien  scapegoat,  to  assert  that  all  the  trouble  came 
from  abroad  and  from  the  Jews.      This   should  not  be  taken  seriously. 


THE  NATIONAL    TEMPERAMENT  AND   CHARACTER.       igj 

Few  designations  have  lent  themselves  to  more  misunderstand- 
ings than  this  term  "nihilism,"  which,  in  reality,  is  only  a  witty 
nickname,  disowned  by  the  greater  part  of  those  to  whom  it  is 
applied.*  As  often  happens  with  such  misnomers,  the  word  has 
changed  meaning  three  or  four  times,  — or  rather,  this  contempt- 
uous surname  has  been  successively  applied  to  diflferent  doctrines 
or  tendencies,  nattu^ally,  however,  connected  with  one  another  by  a 
more  or  less  direct  filiation.  Three  phases  are  distinguishable,  or, 
so  to  speak,  three  stages  and  metamorphoses.  In  its  first  acception, 
"  nihilism  "  was  untinged  with  politics ;  it  was  little  more  than  a 
certain  way  of  bearing  oneself,  thinking,  talking, — a  mannerism, 
a  fashion,  one  might  say  a  pretence  and  attitude,  that  came  into 
favor  among  the  young  people  of  i860  to  1870,  among  the  students 
at  the  universities,  and  the  girl-students  with  cropped  hair  re- 
siding abroad  or  in  the  provinces.  This  designation  was  pointed 
at  a  spirit  of  revolt  against  received  ideas  and  social  convention- 
alities, against  all  traditional  authorities  and  antiquated  religious 
or  political  dogmas,  a  spirit  of  negation,  stamped  with  an  intolerant 
materialism  and  naive  radicalism  ;  nothing  more,  at  bottom,  than 
a  violent  reaction  of  the  Russian  soul  against  the  system  of  govern- 
ment and  the  intellectual  yoke  under  which  it  had  long  been 
bent.  This  was  the  first  and,  properly  speaking,  the  true  nihilism, 
the  nihilism  which  has  been  depicted  in  immortal  strokes  by 
the  most  famous  Russian  novelists,  the  nihilism  of  which  Tur- 


Nihilism  is  a  genuinely  Russian  thing,  although  there  are  numbers  of 
nihilists  outside  of  Russia.  As  to  the  Israelites,  it  might  be  said  that  there 
exists  a  kind  of  Jewish  nihilism  which  naturally  amalgamates  with  the 
Slavic  nihilism.  The  inferior  situation,  created  for  the  numerous  Jews  of 
Russia  by  laws  or  custom,  has,  moreover,  much  to  do  with  their  readiness 
to  take  part  in  plots.— See  Vol.  III.,  Book  IV.,  Ch.  Ill, 

*  The  name  is  taken  from  a  novel  by  Ivan  Turgu^nief,  Fathers  andSons^ 
where,  about  i860,  the  first  generation  of  "  nihilists  "  was  taken  oflF.  The 
Russian  revolutionists  usually  style  themselves  "socialist-democrats,"  or 
simply  "propagandists."  Their  various  factions  are  mostly  named  after 
the  clandestine  periodicals  which  they  issue  as  their  organs.  (See  Vol.  XL, 
Book  v.,  Ch.  III.) 


198       THE  EMPIRE  OF   THE    TSARS  AND    THE  RUSSIANS. 

gu6nief's  Bazdrof  and  Plssemsky's  Helen  will  remain  undying 
presentations.* 

After  this  theoretical  and  abstract  nihilism,  frequently  dabbled 
in  by  amateurs,  at  times  all  made  up  of  posing  and  outward  show, 
and  which  did  not  attempt  to  carry  out  its  maxims  except  in 
individual  life  and  private  relations,  came,  about  1871,  under  the 
twofold  influence  of  the  Paris  Commune  and  the  International, 
a  nihilism  all  action  and  agitation,  transformed  into  a  militant 
socialism,  which  strove  to  spread  its  ideas  among  the  people,  a 
nihilism  already  given  to  politics  and  revolution,  having  recourse 
to  association  and  secret  propaganda,  though  not  to  plots  and 
murder.  It  is  only  after  several  years  of  disappointment  and 
bitterness,  towards  1877-78,  that  this  peaceably  preaching  nihilism, 
transformed  into  a  violent  party  seeking  redress  from  conspiracies 
and  assassinations,  takes  for  its  weapon  d5mamite  and  for  its 
watchword  —  terror,  f  Under  the  threefold  aspect  of  speculative 
radicalism,  socialistic  apostolate,  revolutionary  terrorism,  ' '  nihil- 
ism ' '  has  shed  on  the  Russian  temperament  a  totally  novel  light. 
It  has  laid  bare  before  the  world  a  power  of  logic  as  to  intellect, 
a  force  of  will  as  to  character,  a  capacity  for  passion,  for  fanaticism, 
stubbornness,  and  self-devotion,  which  might  be  matched  among 
popular  sects,  but  which,  as  found  in  civilized  Russians,  have  been 
to  Europe  a  veritable  revelation. 

However  nihilism  may  reach  out  from  afar  towards  Western 
metaphysics,  it  never  was  a  system  after  the  manner  of  Schopen- 
hauer's pessimism  or  Auguste  Comte's  positivism  ;  it  is  not  a  new 
form  of  old  scepticism  or  old  naturalism.  In  its  philosophy  it  is 
little  more  than  a  coarse  and  boisterous  materialism,  almost  devoid 

*  Bazdrof,  the  medical  student,  the  hero  of  Fathers  and  Sons  ;  Helen 
Jigllnsky,  the  heroine  of  Pissemsky's  novel,  which  has  been  translated 
into  French,  under  the  title  of  Dans  le  Tourbillon  (In  the  Whirlpool), 
Charpentier,  1882. 

t  What  caused  this  abrupt  evolution  of  socialism  into  terrorism  will 
be  made  clear  in  Vol.  II.,  Book  VI.,  Ch.  II.,  where  we  shall  study  the  form- 
ation and  organization  of  the  revolutionary  party. 


THE  NATIONAL    TEMPERAMENT  AND  CHARACTER.      1 99 

of  any  scientific  apparatus.  In  its  politics  it  is  a  socialistic  radi- 
calism, fomented  by  bureaucratic  despotism  and  exasperated  by 
the  capricious  severities  of  an  irresponsible  power.  It  is  not  a 
party,  for  under  its  banner  march  revolutionists  of  all  kinds — 
authoritarians,  terrorists,  federalists,  anarchists,  mutualists,  com- 
munists— who  keep  on  terms  of  mutual  understanding  only  by 
putting  off  till  the  day  of  their  triumph  all  discussion  on  future 
organization.* 

In  the  midst  of  all  its  exaggerations,  through  its  successive 
phases,  nihilism  has  been  little  else  than  the  pupil  of  the  revolution- 
ists of  the  west,  a  pupil,  indeed,  who  flatters  himself  that  he  will 
outdo  his  masters,  and  who  magnifies  at  will  their  boldest  teach- 
ings. Russian  radicalism  can,  it  is  true,  claim  one  national  theo- 
retician, who,  for  talent,  character,  or  influence,  does  not  remain 
behind  any  one  of  his  rivals  and  co-religionists  of  the  west.  This 
legislator  of  Utopia-land  is  neither  Herzen  nor  Baktmin, — ^neither 
of  those  exiles,  agitators,  so  long  friends  and  associates,  yet  so 
profoundly  different  in  genius  and  sentiment  that,  in  spite  of  their 
common  aspirations,  they  coUld  fitly  represent  each  one  of  the 
fares  of  the  national  radicalism,  or,  more  correctly,  of  the  Russian 
spirit  itself  t  It  is  not  Herzen,  the  paradoxical  and  fascinating 
writer,  the  great  railer  and  great  dreamer,  whose  eloquence  is  so 
warm  and  highly  colored  that  his  true  home  might  be  the  land 
of  the  sun  ;    Herzen  the  poet  and  minstrel  of  negation,  ever 


*  Under  the  influence  of  Bak^nin  and  the  Internationale  the  greater  part 
of  Russian  revolutionists  appear  to  have  adopted  for  their  formula  the  fede- 
ration of  productive  independent  communes,  suggested  to  them  by  their  own 
communal  organization.  (See  further  in  Book  VIII.)  In  1874,  after  the 
foundation  of  the  paper  Vperidd  (Go  Ahead),  by  I^avrdf,  discussions  having 
arisen  within  the  "  emigration  "  on  the  manner  of  preparing  the  revolution, 
the  most  ardent  ones  declared  with  Tkatchof  that,  instead  of  taking  thought 
for  future  organization,  "the  action  party  "  should  keep  in  view  only  the 
work  of  destruction.  This  advice  became  a  rule  with  the  immense  majority 
of  nihilists. 

fl  had  better  recall  to  the  reader's  mind  that  Herzen  died  at  Nice  in 
1869,  and  Bak^nin  at  Bern  in  1878. 


200      THE  EMPIRE  OF   THE    TSARS  AND   THE  RUSSIANS, 

romantic  and  idealist  in  spite  of  himself,  sceptical  and  sad  at 
bottom,  driven  into  revolutionism  by  his  sympathies,  by  the  crav- 
ing for  hope  and  faith  ;  a  heart  open  to  all  the  passions  as  to  every 
noble  feeling ;  a  mind  accessible  until  the  end  to  all  ideas  and  even 
to  the  rough  teachings  of  experience.  Nor  is  it  Bakiinin,  the 
narrow,  incorrigible  sectarian,  the  logician,  colder  and  harder  than 
the  ice  of  his  native  land,  systematic  as  a  geometrician,  declam- 
atory as  a  rhetorician,  the  fanatic  of  negation,  the  maniac  with 
mind  shut  tight  against  all  that  is  foreign  to  his  craze,  impervious 
to  doubt,  to  discouragement,  to  all  the  teachings  and  deceptions 
of  life. 

Herzen,  by  the  amplitude  of  his  intellect,  which,  undisciplined, 
was  ever  in  search  of  new  things,  by  the  breadth  and  winged  flight 
of  his  imagination,  which  would  carry  him  beyond  his  own  system, 
strangely  overlapped  the  scant  frame  of  doctrinal  nihilism  ;  he  was 
less  its  lawgiver  than  its  involuntary,  free  harbinger.  With  all  his 
weaknesses  and  generous  rushes,  with  his  spells  of  unrealizable 
hopes  and  his  numerous  lapses  into  hopelessness,  with  his 
disappointment  in  revolution  as  well  as  in  civihzation,  with 
all  the  inconsistencies  and  contradictions  of  his  mind  and 
of  his  life,  Herzen,  a  sort  of  revolutionary  Faust,  remains  one 
of  the  most  living  types  of  the  modem  Russian,  thrown  oS"  his 
bearings  by  a  civilization  from  which  he  demands  more  than  it 
has  to  give. 

Bak^nin,  on  the  other  hand,  ' '  the  apostle  of  destruction, ' '  the 
prophet  of  anarchy  and  amorphism,  or  social  formlessness,  the 
involuntary  disintegrator  of  the  Internationale,  and  the  founder  of 
the  hooWoss  Alliance  Universelle, — Bakunin,  the  cosmopolitan  con- 
spirator, the  man  of  deeds,  more  mighty  by  his  word  and  personal 
magnetism  than  by  the  pen  and  written  exhortation,  has,  not- 
withstanding his  relations  with  Nietchdyef  and  the  conspirators  of 
the  north,  had  more  influence,  perhaps,  abroad,  over  the  working- 
men  of  Switzerland,  Spain,  Italy,  than  in  his  own  country,  more 
power  over  professional  conspirators  than  over  the  young  people 


THE  NATIONAL    TEMPERAMENT  AND   CHARACTER.       20I 

at  school.*  All  through  his  long  career,  animated  by  a  single  idea, 
and  that  a  barren  one,  he  was  not  so  much  the  theoretician  or 
codifier  of  the  national  nihilism,  of  which  he  had  appointed  himself 
the  peddler  in  the  west,  as  its  living  impersonation,  and,  we  might 
say,  its  blind  and  sterile  incarnation. 

The  chief  master  and  inspirer  of  nihilism  was  not,  like  Herzen 
and  Bak^in,  an  aristocrat  brought  up  in  the  drawing-rooms  of 
Petersburgh  and  Moscow,  and  whose  existence  was  passed  in 
great  part  abroad.  He  was  a  child  of  the  people,  the  son  of  a  country 
priest,  who  never  stepped  off  the  Russian  soil  and  never  spoke  in 
favor  of  the  West ;  who,  instead  of  preaching  ' '  from  the  other 
side,"  z.  e.  from  London  or  from  Paris,  wrote  in  Petersburgh, 
under  the  censors'  eyes.  This  man,  who  during  his  brief  apostolic 
career,  from  1855  to  1864,  had  over  young  people  an  influence 
which  his  sufferings  served  to  increase, — this  man  was  Tchemy- 
sh^fsky.  This  Russian  Proudhon  or  Lassalle,  sentenced  to  hard 
labor  for  revolutionary  propaganda,  lived  twenty  years  in  Siberia, 
of  which  seven  in  the  mines.  Then  he  aged  in  solitude  and  in- 
action, having  been  sent  to  reside  at  one  of  the  uttermost  stations 
nearest  the  polar  circle,  far  removed  from  all  intercourse  with 
Europe  and  the  outer  world,  f  Well  informed  as  a  writer  and 
unwearying  as  a  worker,  his  weapon  at  one  time  a  redoubtable 
logic,  at  another  a  biting  irony,  gifted  with  an  intellect  both  vig- 
orous and  supple,  an  energetic  and  all-of-one-piece  character, — in 
so  far  like  the  rest  that  he  too  mixed  the  intoxicating  fumes  of 
sentimental  idealism  with  the  crudities  of  realism,  Tchernysh^f- 
sky,  by  his  faults  not  less  than  by  his  qualities,  is  and  remains  a 

*  Nietchdyef  was  a  man  of  intrigue,  who,  under  Bakuniu's  inspiration,  but 
in  view  of  personal  advantages,  had  organized  in  Russia  a  revolutionary 
society.  He  was  arrested  in  Switzerland  and  tried  in  Petersburgh  in  1871, 
for  the  assassination  of  one  of  his  accomplices,  from  whom  he  dreaded 
betrayal,  and  sentenced  to  imprisonment  with  hard  labor. 

t  In  1889  the  papers  announced  his  death  at  Sardtof,  in  the  southeast  of 
Russia,  whither  he  had  been  transferred  at  his  urgent  request.  He  had 
resided  in  Siberia  until  1883,  ttaen  had  been  confined  within  the  city  of 
Astrakhan. 


202       THE  EMPIRE   OF    THE    TSARS  AND    THE  RUSSIANS. 

representative  Russian.  Philosopher,  economist,  critic,  novehst, 
and  everywhere  the  propagator  of  the  cheerless  doctrines  of  which 
he  was  the  first  victim,  Tchernysh^fsky,  in  his  scientific  treatises, 
has  given  the  theory  or  summing  up  of  Russian  radicalism.  In  a 
queer  and  indigestible  novel,  written  in  the  gloom  of  a  prison,  he 
has  given  its  poetry  and  its  gospel.* 

We  shall  hardly  be  wronging  Tchemyshefsky  if  we  ascribe  to 
his  long  and  tedious  novel  more  ascendancy  over  youthful  Russian 
heads  than  his  didactical  treatises  eVer  achieved.  This  man,  whose 
influence  had  dethroned  that  of  Herzen,  and  whom  Siberia  and 
long  sufferings  had  circled  with  the  martyr's  halo,  was  regarded  by 
many  of  his  countrymen  as  one  of  the  giants  of  modem  thought, 
one  of  the  great  pioneers  of  the  future,  as  a  Russian  Fourrier,  or, 
better  still,  Karl  Marx.f  In  spite  of  all  the  admiring  homage  of 
which  he  was  the  object,  notwithstanding  the  sterling  originality  of 
his  mind,  his  ideas  have  nothing  very  original  about  them,  either 
in  political  economy  or  philosophy.  The  form  and  the  details  may 
be  novel  and  marked  with  individuality,  but  the  substance  of 
his  theories  takes  us  to  Germany,  England,  France.'  What  gives  to 

*  Tchemyshefsky  opened  fire,  about  1855,  by  a  treatise  on  naturalistic 
esthetics,  his  subject  being  The  Relations  between  Art  and  Reality.  A 
little  later,  in  an  essay  entitled  The  Anthropological  Principle  in  Phi- 
losophy, he  expounded  a  system  of  transformistic  materialism,  defended 
the  unity  of  principle  in  nature  and  in  man,  and  reduced  ethics  to  pleasure 
or  utility.  In  i860  he  published  in  the  Sovretniknnik  (Contemporary), 
conducted  by  the  poet  Niekrdssof,  a  review  of  the  Political  Economy  of 
Stuart  Mill,  on  wholly  socialistic  lines.  This  review  was  translated  into 
French  under  the  title,  Economic  Politique JugSe par  la  Science  ;  Critique  des 
Principes  de  Stuart  Mill  (Bruxelles,  1874). — (Political  Economy  Judged 
by  Science  :  a  Criticism  on  the  Principles  of  Stuart  Mill.)  Lastly,  in  1863, 
\h&  SovremiSnnik,  which  was  soon  after  suppressed,  published  anonymously 
his  novel.  What  is  to  be  Done?    It  was  written  in  prison,  in  Petersburgh. 

t  See,  for  instance,  the  introduction  to  a  pamphlet  entitled  Unaddressed 
Letters,  a  little  book  that  was  never  finished,  but  was  published  in  French, 
1874,  and  also  in  Russian,  in  the  same  year,  in  the  revolutionary  review 
Vperidd. 

*  Farther  away  and  back  too,  as  far  as  ancient  India.  Our  theoreticians 
fall  into  plagiarism  continually,  but  most  innocently,  from  simple  ignorance, 
since  they  deliberately  throw  the  ptist  overboard,  under  the  name  of  "  use- 


THE  NATIONAL    TEMPERAMENT  AND   CHARACTER.      203 

Tchemysh^fsky's  works,  leastwise  to  this  novel,  the  most  native 
soil-flavor,  is  possibly  that  kind  of  mystic  and  visionary  realism 
which  we  find  in  so  many  nihilists.  Moreover,  however  great 
may  have  been  the  ascendant  of  Tchemysh^fsky  and  a  few  other 
writers  of  that  ilk,  nihilism  is  far  from  having  followed  in  servile 
fashion  the  masters  it  glorifies,  it  is  more  indebted  to  their 
romantic  fictions  than  to  their  scientific  deductions. 

From  the  psychological  point  of  view,  one  might  say  that  the 
nihilism  of  Turguenief's  and'Pissemsky's  heroes  is  the  outcome 
of  the  union  between  the  two  opposite  inclinations  of  the  Russian 
character — that  to  the  absolute  and  that  to  realism.  From  this 
unnatural  connubium  was  bom  that  repulsive  monster,  one  of  the 
sorriest  births  of  modem  thought.  There  again  we  encounter  an 
instance  of  that  impatience  under  restraint  of  any  sort,  that  reckless 
boldness  in  speculation,  which  are  frequently  found  among  the 
Russians,  but  which,  with  them,  lay  less  claim  to  science  and  method 
than  among  the  Germans.  From  the  moral  and  political  stand- 
points, nihilism  was  first  of  all  a  sort  of  pessimism,  half  instinctive 
and  half  thought  out,  a  form  of  pessimism  not  uninfluenced  by 
nature  and  climate,  fostered  and  intensified  by  history  and  the 
political  order  of  things.*  Seeing  nothing  around  but  evil,  it  longed 
to  demolish  everything — government,  religion,  society,  family — 
in  order  to  reconstruct,  all  in  one  block,  a  better  world.  Doc- 
trinary  nihilism,  the  oldest  and  most  ordinary  form,  has  never  had 
anything  in  common  with  the  critical  scepticism  which  compares 
and  analyzes,  reserving  its  judgment  and  liberty.  Being  in  sub- 
less  ballast"  (not  a  felicitous  simile,  as  no  ship  can  go  straight  and  steady 
without  ballast).  So  they  keep  every  now  and  then  stating  what  they  fancy 
to  be  novelties,  in  beautiful  unconsciousness  that  they  propound  theories 
that  have  been  tried  and  exploded  hundreds  of  years  ago  ;  they  are  all  the 
time,  in  the  pregnant  Russian  phrase,  "discovering  Americas." 

*  Herzen  ( The  Russian  People  and  Socialism)  wrote  already  about  1848, 
long  before  nihilism  had  a  name  :  "  The  real  character  of  Russian  thought 
was  developed  in  all  its  force  under  Nicolas.  The  distinctive  feature  of 
that  movement  is  a  tragical  emancipation  of  conscience,  an  implacable 
negation,  a  bitter  irony." 


204       7'^^  EMPIRE   OF   THE    TSARS  AND   THE  RUSSIANS. 

Stance  a  negation  which  affirms  itself  and  admits  of  no  inquiry,  it 
was  ftx)m  the  very  first  a  sort  of  dogmatism  the  wrong  way,  as 
narrow,  as  blind  as,  and  no  less  imperious,  no  less  intolerant,  than 
the  traditional  creeds  the  yoke  of  which  it  throws  off. 

In  the  intemperateness  and  coarseness  of  their  negation,  flung 
in  the  face  of  all  that  humanity  holds  it  an  honor  to  respect, 
something  could  be  felt  in  Bazdrof  s  imitators  of  the  boyish- 
ness of  incredulity  when  it  is  as  yet  a  novelty,  something  of  the 
ill-regulated  excesses  of  minds  but  recently  set  free.  In  these 
pretensions  to  maturity,  advanced  by  a  youthful  generation  disil- 
lusioned before  having  lived,  something  like  depraved  childish- 
ness peeps  through.  For  many  adepts  the  nihihstic  theories 
were  only  a  sort  of  protest  against  the  old-time  superstitions  which 
still  sway  the  masses,  against  the  political  servilit}',  the  intellectual 
hypocrisy,  or  conventional  belief  in  dogmas  which  still  prevail  too 
generally  among  the  higher  classes. 

A  nihilist  of  the  first  manner  was  asked  in  what  his  doctrine 
consisted.  "Take  earth  and  heaven,"  he  replied;  "take  State 
and  Church,  kings  and  God,  and  spit  on  it  all — that  is  our 
symbol."  Were  it  the  raillery  of  an  adversary,  this  definition 
still  would  be  exact.  The  word,  however,  is  less  shocking  to  the 
ears  of  Russians,  for  spitting  plays  a  great  part  in  their  life  and 
superstitions.  You  spit  to  turn  aside  an  evil  omen  ;  you  spit  to 
express  wonder  or  contempt ;  you  spit  everywhere  and  all  the 
time.f  The  nihilist  took  pleasure  in  spitting  on  everything ;  he 
delighted  in  challenging  and  defying  the  spirit  of  veneration  and 
humility  so  tenaciously  rooted  in  the  Russian  * '  of  the  people, ' '  who 

t  Turgu^nief  somewhere  tells  that  at  Heidelberg,  frequented  at  the  time 
by  many  Russian  students  who  had  been  expelled  from  their  own  national 
universities,  there  appeared,  about  1865,  a  nihilist  paper  entitled  On  All 
Comers  I  Spit.  When  a  Russian  means  "I  don't  care  a  snap,"  he  says 
"I  spit  on  it."» 

*  Spitting,  in  the  Greek  Church,  is  a  form  of  exorcism.  Thus  at  baptisms, 
at  the  point  of  the  service  where  the  godfather  and  godmother,  in  the 
infant's  name,  renounce  Satan  and  his  pomps,  they  emphasize  the  renuncia- 
tion by  thrice  spitting  at  the  Enemy— over  their  shoulder. 


THE  NATIONAL    TEMPERAMENT  AND  CHARACTER,      20$ 

even  yet  bends  in  twain  before  his  superiors,  as  before  the  holy 
etkons  or  images.  Herein  lies  an  indication  of  the  profound  dis- 
cordance in  thoughts  and  feelings  under  which  the  nation  labours. 
Morally  and  physically,  in  man  and  nature  alike,  the  two  extremes 
meet :  to  the  most  naive  veneration,  political  as  well  as  religious, 
corresponds  the  most  barefaced  cynicism,  intellectual  and  moral. 

The  coarse  and  repulsive  realism,  so  obtrusively  apparent  in 
nihilism,  so  perceptible  in  the  Russian  schools,  among  the  major- 
ity of  students,  could  not  fail  to  attract  the  attention  of  enlightened 
minds  and  the  government.  Against  this  unwholesome  bent  of 
the  young  and  of  the  national  mind  a  remedy  had  to  be  sought  for, 
a  counterpoise,  primarily  in  the  education  of  the  young.  Religion 
could  not  be  relied  on  overmuch,  for  in  Russia  it  has  but  little 
hold  on  the  cultured  classes,  and  orthodoxy  is  weakened  rather 
than  strengthened  by  the  compromising  support  of  the  govern- 
ment and  the  imperfection  of  religious  liberty.  I^acking  better 
means,  recourse  was  had  to  classical  studies,  but  in  vain.  I^itera- 
ture  and  the  dead  languages  being  the  studies  most  disinterested, 
most  removed  from  actual  preoccupations,  were  thought  to  be  the 
best  corrective  to  the  exaggerated  naturalism  of  embryo  Bazdrofs. 
Under  the  influence  of  Katk5f  and  his  Moscow  Gazette,  the  ministry 
of  public  instruction,  directed  by  Count  Tolstoy,  has  been  long  at 
work,  striving  to  subject  the  entire  young  generation  to  this  classi- 
cal discipline,  and,  through  that,  to  a  sort  of  idealistic  gymnastics 
Dr  drilling.  The  most  singular  thing  about  the  business  is  that 
the  languages  and  literatures,  now  suddenly  called  in  to  the  rescue 
of  society,  had  long  been  held  "  suspicious."  Under  the  Emperor 
Nicolas  the  Greek  and  I^atin  classics  had  been  denounced  as 
fostering  the  spirit  of  revolt.  Demosthenes  and  Cicero,  all  the 
republicans  of  Athens  and  Rome,  were  supposed  to  kindle  revolu- 
tionary sentiments.  In  point  of  fact,  they  have  been  undesirable 
teachers  of  children  destined  to  live  and  die  under  an  autocratic 
rule.  If  not  exactly  proscribed,  instruction  in  ancient  history 
and  literature  had  certainly  been  curtailed  and  lowered.     In  the 


206      THE  EMPIRE  OF  THE   TSARS  AND  THE  RUSSIANS. 

schools  tolerated  by  Nicolas,  precedence  had  been  g^ven  to  the 
sciences,  especially  the  nattiral  sciences  ;  that  meant  pushing  the 
Russian  mind  down  the  very  incline  to  which  it  was  naturally 
drawn. 

By  one  of  those  abrupt  changes  so  frequent  in  Russia,  and 
quite  compatible  with  the  nature  of  the  government,  there  was, 
imder  Alexander  II. ,  a  sudden  return  to  the  classics  and  antiquity. 
It  was  announced  as  a  discovery  that  the  exclusive  study  of 
physical  and  natural  sciences  must  lead  to  positivism.  To  coun- 
terbalance their  realistic  influence,  the  ancient  literatures,  treated 
but  lately  with  distrust,  were  summoned  in.  After  having  been 
accounted  the  accomplices  of  revolution,  Greek  and  I^atin  became 
the  supporters  of  moral  order.  This  restoration  of  classical  studies 
in  a  country  which  pretended  to  have  no  use  for  Greeks  and 
Romans,  butted  straight  against  the  national  inclinations  which 
it  was  expected  to  correct.  Accordingly  it  was  violently  kicked 
against  by  all  the  instincts,  practical  and  positive,  of  the  Great- 
Russian,  the  more  outraged  at  such  a  treatment,  as  the  awkward- 
ness and  harshness  of  the  hand  that  inflicted  it  made  it  more  pain- 
ful and  irritating.  Notwithstanding  the  efforts  made  by  Count 
Tolstoy,  through  fifteen  years,*  the  study  of  antiquity  could  not 
restrain  the  realistic  and  radical  tendencies  of  the  contemporary 
young  generation.  As  a  protest  against  classicism,  materialism 
and,  along  with  it,  revolutionary  nihilism  have  never  stopped 
increasing  in  the  schools,  irritated  by  petty  restrictions  and  puerile 
vexations,  which  hit  the  teachers  almost  as  hard  as  the  learners. 
For,  to  prevail  against  such  inclinations,  indirectly  encouraged  by 
the  social  and  political  order  of  things,  it  is  not  enough  to  change 

*  Count  Tolstoy  became  the  most  unpopular  of  ministers,  and  had  to 
give  up  the  portfolio  of  Public  Instruction  in  1880.  In  1883  he  was  ap- 
pointed Minister  of  the  Interior,  and  died  in  1889.  Under  Alexander  III. 
another  abrupt  change.  After  having  done  everything  to  attract  students 
to  the  classical  universities  and  gymnasiums,  regulations  were  issued  in 
1887,  calculated  to  keep  away  from  them  young  people  not  possessed  of 
large  means  or  influential  family  connections. 


THE  NATIONAL    TEMPERAMENT  AND   CHARACTER.      20/ 

the  school  curriculum  and  make  over  the  programmes  of  lessons 
and  lectures. 

Coarse  negative  materialism  is  not  the  whole  of  nihilism. 
This  Janus  has  another  face  still,  very  different,  yet  equally 
Russian — mysticism.  These  men,  so  scornful  of  all  creeds,  all 
dreams,  metaphysical  or  religious,  themselves  have  speculations 
and  dreams  of  their  own  ;  and  not  the  most  timid  or  best  regulated 
either.  At  the  bottom  of  this  naturalistic  realism  lurks  a  kind  of 
idealism,  anxious  to  take  its  flight  through  all  the  unexplored 
fields  of  possibilities.  From  out  this  pessimism,  which  curses  the 
actual  social  order,  issues  an  unbridled  optimism,  which  ingenu- 
ously draws  on  the  marvels  of  a  Utopian  future.  In  Russia,  a 
number  of  young  people  of  both  sexes,  who  would  consider  it  the 
most  cutting  of  insults  to  be  called  idealists,  and  the  depth  of 
humiliation  to  be  held  for  such,  do  not  hesitate,  in  matters  the 
least  apt,  it  would  seem,  for  such  treatment,  to  give  themselves 
up  to  the  most  foolhardy  dreams.  It  is  in  the  domain  of  social 
and  economical  theories,  in  the  field  of  positive  realities,  that  the 
Russian,  whether  nihilist  or  not,  loves  best  to  indulge  in  the 
fumes  of  Utopia  and  the  search  for  the  absolute.  By  entangling 
himself  too  deeply  in  realism  and  utilitarianism,  he  falls  back 
into  theories  and  chimeric  vagaries,  as  though  wandering  in  a 
circle;  it  is  when  he  has  apparently  strayed  farthest  that  he 
returns  to  abstract  spectdation,  as  a  traveller,  after  getting  to  the 
antipodes,  might  land  on  another  part  of  the  shore  of  the  country 
he  had  quitted.  The  sphere  which  demands  most  moderation 
and  intellectual  sobriety  is  precisely  that  in  which  the  Russian — 
and  in  that  he  does  not  stand  alone — leaves  the  widest  scope 
to  his  imagination.  With  a  great  difference  in  knowledge  and 
method,  have  we  not  seen  something  of  the  same  wrong-headed 
speculativeness  among  the  most  declared  opponents  of  metaphysics 
— ^for  instance,  among  certain  positivists  who,  in  economical  and 
political  questions,  have  at  times  arrived  at  conclusions  so  little 
in  unison  with  their  method  and  in  reality  so  anything  but  posi- 


208      THE  EMPIRE  OF  THE   TSARS  AND   THE  RUSSIANS. 

tive?  This  contradiction,  which  is  quite  habitual  with  the 
majority  of  sociahsts  or  radicals,  this  sort  of  wheeling-round, 
which,  in  the  most  negative  schools  is  so  easily  accounted  for  by 
an  unconquerable  craving  for  an  ideal  and  for  faith  jn  a  better 
world,  is  nowhere  less  rare  or  more  striking  than  among  the 
Russians.  On  this  ground  their  natural  turn  of  mind  shows  oflf, 
with  all  its  contrasts,  its  distrust  and  contempt  for  generally 
received  creeds,  with  its  naive  trust  in  doubtful  positions  and  its 
love  of  paradox. 

Tocqueville  has  remarked  that  in  our  days  the  revolutionary 
spirit  acts  after  the  manner  of  the  religious  spirit.  This  is  more 
true  in  contemporary  Russia  than  anywhere  else.  For  many 
young  people  revolution  has  become  a  religion,  of  which  the  dog- 
mas are  as  little  to  be  discussed  as  a  revealed  "creed,"  which  has 
its  confessors  and  martyrs  as  well  as  its  gods  and  idols.  With 
them  negation  has  taken  the  aspect  and  character  of  a  faith — the 
same  enthusiastic  fervor,  the  same  sombre  and  contagious  ex- 
altation. From  this  point  of  view,  the  opinion  of  the  ignorant 
abroad,  who  used  to  take  nihilism  for  a  sect,  is  not  as  false  as  it 
seemed  at  first  sight.  With  its  absolute  spirit,  intolerant  of  any 
criticism,  with  its  blind  faith  and  passionate  self-devotions,  it  is 
indeed  a  sort  of  cult  of  which  the  god,  deaf  and  unfeeling,  is  "the 
people,"  worshipped  in  its  abasement, — a  sort  of  church,  kept 
together  by  the  bond  of  love  to  that  misjudged  deity,  and  whose 
law  is  hatred  to  its  persecutors. 

These  nihilists,  detractors  of  all  hope  in  the  supernatural  and 
contemners  of  every  kind  of  spiritualism,  are  themselves,  after  a 
fashion  of  their  own,  believers  and  mystics.  This  can  often  be 
perceived  in  their  manner  of  speech,  in  their  writings,  although 
most  of  them  profess  to  despise  poetry  as  babyish  stuff.  These 
foes  to  all  superstition  and  veneration,  who,  in  the  noblest  self- 
sacrifice  pretend  to  see  nothing  but  a  reflex  action  or  a  refined 
form  of  egotism,  honor  the  heroes  and  heroines  of  their  struggle 
against  might  with  a  sort  of  poetical  canonization.   They  celebrate 


THE  NATIONAL    TEMPERAMENT  AND   CHARACTER.      209 

the  martyrs  of  their  cause  with  a  lyrism  and  a  sort  of  piety  which 
seems  addressed  rather  to  saints  enthroned  in  their  shrines  than 
to  modem  conspirators.* 

Read  Tchemysh^fsky's  famous  novel,  What  is  to  be  Done  f  f 
(Shfb  Diilatf),  and  you  will  be  surprised  at  the  singular  medley 
of  mysticism  and  realism,  of  practical,  wholly  prosaic  obser- 
vations, and  vague,  visionary  aspirations,  all  huddled  together 
in  this  strange  work  of  the  radical  doctrinarian.  In  this  long, 
slow  story,  which  claims  to  depict  for  us  the  reformers  of  society 
and  the  sages  of  the  future,  it  is  through  symbols,  in  dreams,  that 
to  the  heroine  are  revealed  her  own  destinies,  together  with  those 
of  woman  generally,  and  the  human  race.  True,  these  suflSciently 
transparent  allegories  may  have  been  suggested  to  the  author, 
then  already  imprisoned,  by  the  necessity  of  not  arousing  too  much 
the  distrust  of  the  censors'  office.  In  the  prisoner's  novel,  side 
by  side  with  this  humanitarian  mysticism,  a  sort  of  naturalistic 
asceticism  shows  itself,  which  to  foreigners  appears  more  peculiar 
/  still.  His  ideal  revolutionist,  the  finished  type  of  the  "new 
men, ' '  Rakhmietof,  not  only  owns  all  the  moral  perfections  of  the 
brotherhood  and  universal  solidarity,  but,  like  a  Christian  ancho- 
rite, or  a  Hindoo  yogee,  takes  delight  in  renouncing  the  joys  of 
life  and  the  pleasures  of  the  senses  ;  inflicts  privations  on  himself, 
hardships  ;  loves  to  mortify  his  flesh,  so  as  to  make  himself  like 
his  suffering  deity — the  oppressed   "people."     When  fruit  was 

*  Take,  for  instance,  the  following  translation  of  verses  addressed  to  one 
of  the  heroines  of  one  of  the  great  political  trials,  Lydia  Figner,  •who  had 
studied  medicine  at  Zurich  and  Paris  :  "  Mighty,  O  maiden,  is  the  impres- 
sion produced  by  thy  witching  beauty  ;  but  mightier  than  the. witchery  of 
thy  countenance  is  the  charm  of  thy  soul's  purity.  .  .  .  Full  of  pity  is  the 
image  of  the  Saviour,  full  of  sadness  are  his  divine  features  ;  but  in  thy  eye 
of  fathomless  depth  there  is  even  more  love,  more  pain  still." — Infanticide 
Perpetrated  by  the  Russian  Government,  Geneva,  1877.  Compare  the  por- 
traits of  revolutionists  given  under  the  nam,  de  plume  Stepniik  in  Russia 
Sotterranea  (Underground  Russia),  a  small  volxmie  published  in  Italian,  in 
Milan,  1882,  with  a  preface  by  I^avrof. 

f  This  novel  has  been  translated,  or  rather  epitomized,  in  bad  French, 
in  an  edition  published  in  Milan  in  1878. 


2IO      THE  EMPIRE   OF   THE   TSARS  AND    THE  RUSSIANS. 

placed  before  him,  he  ate  none  but  apples,  because  in  Russia 
apples  are  the  only  fruit  ' '  the  people  ' '  can  partake  of.  If  he  did 
not  wear  a  horse-hair  shirt,  this  vindicator  of  the  rights  of  the 
flesh  used,  instead  of  sleeping  in  a  bed,  to  lie  on  a  felt  rug  all 
studded  with  short  nails,  points  upwards.* 

Men  like  Rakhmi^tof,  doubtless,  are  rare  outside  of  fictions. 
Of  Tchemysh^fsky's  admirers,  only  too  many  give  themselves  up 
to  the  unbridled  license  authorized  by  their  wretched  doctrines. 
This  stoicism,  this  contempt  of  material  delights,  imperatively 
demanded  for  others,  does,  however,  show  up  sometimes  in  real 
life.  Among  the  innovators  of  either  sex  who  profess  and  fre- 
quently practise  free  love,  I  have  known  such  as  considered  it 
incumbent  on  their  honor  not  to  use  for  their  own  benefit  the 
rights  which  they, claimed.*  This  naturally  is  the  case  more  often 
with  women,  as  they  are  always  more  given  to  inconsistencies,  more 
anxious  to  ennoble  all  sorts  of  aberrations.  It  is  there,  among 
some  of  these  votaresses  of  nihilism,  these  young  girls  who  are 
its  most  ardent  proselytes  and  most  courageous  missionaries,  that 
one  can  best  see  how  much  generous  feeling  and  unconscious 
idealism  can  thrive  under  the  mantle  of  this  repulsive  materialism. 

^  This  feat  of  asceticism,  from  its  imf>ossibility,  has  become  proverbial, 
an  equivalent  of  the  rediictio  ad  absurdum  of  classical  rhetoric.  So  that  a 
translator  familiar  only  with  the  dictionary,  in  tackling  very  modem  stories, 
sketches,  comedies,  etc.,  might  at  any  time  be  nonplussed  by  phrases  like  the 
following,  and  not  to  be  rendered  in  any  other  way  : — "Oh,  come  now,  you 
are  talking  yourself  to  nails  "  ;  or  : — "  We  talked  and  talked  for  hours  ;  but 
when  they  got  to  nails,  I  got  up  and  left "  ;  or  yet : — "At  this  rate  we  shall 
soon  get  to  nails." 

*Here  is  one  of  Rakhmidtof's  maxims:  " Seeing  we  demand  that  all 
men  should  be  free  to  enjoy  life  in  its  entirety,  we  must  prove,  by  our  exam- 
ple, that  our  object  in  making  the  demand  is  not  the  satisfaction  of  our  own 
personal  passions,  but  the  happiness  of  all."  * 

'  This  identical  plea  was  put  forward  against  the  Neo-Christian  reformer, 
P^re  Hyacinthe,  when  he  took  to  himself  a  wife, — by  his  opponents  and 
even  by  not  a  few  of  his  followers.  While  he  claimed  that  it  was  his  duty 
to  marry  in  order  to  enforce  by  his  example  his  denunciations  of  clerical 
celibacy  with  its  inevitable  consequence  —  gross  immorality, —  he  was 
accused  of  having  made  the  point  solely  in  order  to  justify  in  the  world's 
right  his  own  self-indulgence. 


THE  NATIONAL    TEMPERAMENT  AND   CHARACTER.       211 

Among  these  women  who  preach  the  suppression  of  family  life 
and  the  free  union  of  the  sexes, — among  these  maidens  with  the 
close-cropped  hair,  who  delight  in  mimicking  the  ways  and  tricks 
of  speech  of  the  young  men,  it  is  by  no  means  rare  to  discover 
such,  whose  conduct,  far  from  harmonizing  with  their  cynical 
principles,  remains  pure  and  blameless,  in  spite  of  all  the  ap- 
pearances of  a  life  of  adventure  and  lawlessness,  in  spite  of  a 
sort  of  moral  promiscuity  in  which  the  best  behaved  appear  to 
find  pleasure.* 

Nihilism  has  its  virgins.  Many  girl-conspirators  of  twenty, 
exiled  within  the  last  few  years,  have  carried  into  Siberia  an  im- 
maculate virtue,  the  more  meritorious  that  their  doctrines  do  not 
inculcate  it.  Stranger  still,  nihilism  has  had  its  mystical  or  pla- 
tonical  unions,  its  married  couples  that  were  not  such  in  reality, 
z.  e.  ostensibly  married  in  the  eyes  of  the  world,  but  preferring  to 
live  as  though  they  were  not.  These  unions  went  in  the  sect  by 
the  name  of  ' '  fictitious  marriages. ' '  Since  the  trial  of  Nietchdyef, 
/  in  1 87 1,  few  political  trials  failed  to  reveal  some  of  these  singular 
unions.  For  many — especially  young  girls — it  was  a  welcome 
means  of  emancipation,  which  made  it  easy  to  carry  on 
political  propaganda.  The  young  girl,  won  over  to  the  sacred 
cause,  was  offered  a  husband,  so  she  might  enjoy  the  freedom  of 
a  married  woman.  Sometimes  it  was  the  man  who  had  catechised 
and  converted  her,  oftener  an  old  friend,  sometimes  a  stranger, 
enlisted  for  the  purpose.     Solovi5f,  one  of  those  who  attempted 

*  In  the  university  cities,  students  of  both  sexes  were  often  known  to 
dwell  side  by  side.  Their  several  rooms  were  divided  only  by  a  thin  parti- 
tion, or  a  door,  barricaded  merely  by  a  bed  or  wardrobe.  "Young  men," 
says  a  man  who  has  been  established  in  Russia  a  long  time,  "look  out  for 
furnished  rooms  where  some  are  occupied  by  women-students,  who  do  them 
a  hundred  little  services.  It  is  not  superfluous  to  mention  that  the  greatest 
morality  reigns  in  these  mixed  colonies." — Edm.  de  Molinari,  yournal  of  the 
Economists,  ist  of  May,  1880.  This  frequent  cohabitation,  however,  even 
though  unprejudicial  to  the  morals,  helped  to  increase  the  exaltation 
of  young  people  of  both  sexes,  who  mutually  excited  and,  so  to  speak, 
wound  one  another  up. 


212       THE  EMPIRE  OF   THE    TSARS  AND   THE  RUSSIANS. 

the  Emperor  Alexander  II. 's  life,  had  contracted  a  marriage  of 
this  sort.  In  reality  the  bride  had  espoused  only  the  sect,  her 
slender  dowry  went  into  the  common  till,  and  the  couple  separated 
frequently  on  the  very  day  of  their  wedding,  to  go  their  different 
ways,  "to  make  propaganda"  at  some  distant  spot.  That  is 
what  Solovi5f  had  done,  and  when  he  and  his  wife  left  the 
province  for  Petersburgh,  they  took  separate  lodgings.  To 
some  this  "  fictitious  marriage  "  was  an  association,  a  sort  of  co- 
operation between  two  comrades.  Others  regarded  it  as  a  fine 
chance  to  show  their  contempt  for  an  institution  blessed  by  the 
Church  and  sanctioned  by  the  State,  a  way  of  placing  themselves 
above  society  while  pretending  to  obey  its  laws.  The  husband 
took  no  advantage  of  the  rights  awarded  him  by  religion  and 
law  ;  the  wife  preserved  her  liberty  while  legally  bound.  After 
thus  practically  sneering  at  regular  unions  and  denying  herself 
to  her  husband,  she  could,  with  his  consent,  go  and  practise  fi-ee 
love.  For  some  few,  again,  "fictitious  marriage  "  became  a  sort 
of  novitiate  or  test  stage,  which,  after  a  few  months'  or  years' 
trial,  made  room  for  a  more  natural  union.  Thus  it  is  that,  in 
Tchemysh^fsky's  novel,  V6ra  and  Lapukhbf  live  together  at  first 
as  brother  and  sister  ;  they  occupy  under  the  same  roof  two  sepa- 
rate apartments,  divided  by  a  neutral  ground,  until  one  day  they 
move  into  a  common  chamber,  when  the  husband  finds  out  that 
a  mutual  attachment  has  sprung  up  between  his  wife  and  one  of 
his  friends,  and  discreetly  disappears,  in  order  not  to  place  them 
in  an  awkward  position,  or  cause  them  to  feel  any  scruple,  mean- 
ing to  return  under  another  name,  at  the  end  of  a  few  years,  and 
witness  in  good  comradeship  the  happiness  of  the  new  couple. 

It  was  in  the  manner  of  carrying  on  the  nihilistic  propaganda, 
during  its  period  of  secret  socialistic  preaching,  that  the  faith, 
enthusiasm,  and  religious  devotion  of  the  adepts  shone  forth  most 
brightly,  and  that  not  only  in  the  recklessness  of  their  attempts, 
or  in  the  doggedness  with  which  they  braved  deportation  and 
death.     Such  pathetic  courage  before  judge  and  hangman  other 


THE  NATIONAL    TEMPERAMENT  AND   CHARACTER.      21$ 

sectarians,  revolutionists  of  other  countries,  have  often  shown  as 
well ;  there  is  no  folly  however  perverse  but  has  had  its  believers 
and  martyrs.  The  power  of  exaltation  characteristic  of  the  Slavic 
soul  only  manifests  itself  here  in  a  more  singular  manner.  What  is 
peculiar  to  contemporary  Russian  nihilism  is  its  way  of  appealing 
to  the  masses  ;  "  going  forth  among  the  people  " — (itti  v-narbd) 
— is  the  consecrated  phrase.  In  order  better  to  understand  the 
people  whom  they  wish  to  indoctrinate,  to  make  themselves  better 
understood  by  them,  they  go  forth  and  mix  with  them,  strive  to 
assimilate  with  them,  to  live  their  own  Hfe  of  privation  and  man- 
ual labor,  discarding  the  prejudices  and  habits  of  their  bringing  up. 
In  this  the  missionaries  of  nihilism  apparently  propose  to  imitate 
the  first  apostles  of  Christianity.  What  other  country  has  seen 
young  men  of  good  family,  university  students,  cast  off  the  garb 
and  habits  of  their  class,  put  away  books  and  pen,  to  labor  like 
workmen  in  factories,  so  as  to  be  in  a  position  enabling  them 
better  to  understand  ' '  the  people ' '  and  initiate  them  to  their  own 
doctrines  ?  *  In  what  other  country  do  we  see  young  ladies,  well- 
bred  and  well-informed,  on  their  return  from  foreign  countries, 
rejoice  at  having  obtained  the  position  of  cook  in  the  family  of  a 
superintendent,  so  as  to  get  nearer  to  ' '  the  people ' '  and  personally 
study  the  labor  question  ?  f 

In  Russia,  where  manners,  ideas,  even  clothes,  place  a  greater 
distance  between  the  different  classes,  this  sort  of  disfranchise- 
ment must  assuredly  be  more  painfully  felt  than  anywhere  else. 
In  this  manner  of  "making  propaganda,"  getting  into  direct 
contact  with  the  people,  do  we  not  recognize,  through  all  its 
attractions,  the  practical  sense,  the  realistic  turn  of  mind  of  the 

*  That  is  what,  to  quote  one  instance,  Prince  Titsi^nof  and  his  accom- 
plices did  (trial  of  1875)  ;  also  Solovidf  till  1878.  Others  learned  trades  and 
opened  workshops  in  various  cities :  a  locksmith's  shop  at  Tula,  a  carpen- 
ter's at  Moscow,  a  shoemaker's  at  Sar^tof,  etc. 

t  Testimony  of  a  young  lady  in  the  trial  of  Prince  Titsi^nof  (1877),  The 
trials  of  1878-1882  have  brought  to  light  other  facts  of  the  same  kind. 
From  such  models  Turgu^nief  drew  the  heroine  in  his  novel,  Virgin  Soil. 


214      7'A^^  EMPIRE   OF   THE    TSARS  AND    THE  RUSSIANS. 

Russian  ?  Instead  of  holding  aloof  and  hovering  in  the  misty- 
regions  of  theory,  he  descends  to  the  laborer's  level  and  the 
peasant's,  associates  with  him  in  the  factory  or  the  workshop,  in 
the  school  or  the  common  dwelling.*  With  him  practical  sense 
combines  in  quaintest  guise  with  his  speculative  eccentricities ; 
thus  a  sort  of  idealism  is  grafted  on  the  most  uncompromising 
naturalism.* 

Scarcely  anything  can  be  more  heartrending  to  the  observer 
than  this  combination,  among  the  young  of  both  sexes,  of  qualities 
and  defects  opposed  to  one  another  and  almost  equally  extreme, 
than  this  pledging  to  nefarious  doctrines  of  the  loftiest,  most  gen- 
erous capabilities  of  the  human  heart.  However  that  may  be, 
however  repulsive  in  its  principles  and  odious  in  its  practical 
attacks  on  life  and  property  nihilism  may  show  itself,  it  cannot  be 
denied  that  it  reveals  several  of  the  finest  qualities  of  the  Russian 
mind  and  character,  and  precisely  those  which  foreigners  are  most 
apt  to  deny.  If  it  brings  out  into  the  glare  of  daylight  some  of 
the  most  unlucky  traits  of  the  Russian  temperament,  its  sinister 
blaze  illumines  one  of  that  temperament's  noblest  and  least  showy 
phases.  This  people,  so  often  accused  of  passiveness  and  intel- 
lectual torpor,  is  shown  to  us  capable  of  energy  and  initiative,  of 
sincere  and  active  enthusiasm,  capable  of  devotion  to  ideas.  From 
this  point  of  view  I  will  venture  to  say  that  this  terrible  phenome- 
non does  credit  to  the  nation  which  suffers  under  it.  In  Russia 
it  is  not,  as  elsewhere,  want  and  ignorance,  cupidity  and  ambition, 
that  are  the  most  active  leavens  of  the  revolutionary  spirit ;  fre- 
quently they  are  noble  and  lofty  passions,  feelings  generous  in 
their  very  errors.   The  men  who  claim  to  be  the  apostles  of  human 

*  One  of  the  means  of  propaganda  revealed  by  the  political  trials  is  for 
the  adept  to  procure  an  appointment  as  village  schoolmaster  or  communal 
scribe.  Solovidf  had  served  in  both  capacities.  Many  agitators  of  both 
sexes  embraced,  for  the  same  reasons,  the  medical  profession. 

•  All  this  forcibly  recalls  the  ground  taken  by  Walter  Besant  in  that 
wonderful  book  of  his,  All  Sorts  and  Conditions  of  Men,  which  is  as  much  a 
darion-note  and  call  to  arms,  though  only  spiritual,  as  Uncle  Tom's  Cahin. 


THE  NATIONAL    TEMPERAMENT  AND   CHARACTER.      21$ 

solidarity  can,  when  called  upon,  share  in  the  labors  of  the  lowly 
and  in  the  sufferings  of  the  poor.  They  are  not  unaware  that,  in 
their  country,  a  revolution  is  not  as  yet  a  career  nor  a  game  at 
which  ambition  has  all  to  win  and  nothing  to  risk. 

The  greater  part  of  the  nihilists,  of  those  at  least  who  fig^e 
in  the  trials,  are  very  young — mere  boys  and  girls.  It  is  among 
such  that  the  revolutionary  faith  enrolls  almost  all  its  neophytes. 
Among  sentenced  or  arrested  conspirators,  men  of  thirty  are 
rare,  few  are  over  twenty-five,  many  are  not  of  age.  On  the 
other  hand,  nothing  can  be  more  common  than  to  see  young 
people,  inclined  to  every  kind  of  visionary  chimeras,  become,  at 
the  end  of  ten  or  fifteen  years,  practical  men  of  the  earth  earthy, 
of  the  world  worldly,  who  deem  it  a  good  bargain  to  get  rid  of 
principles  in  order  to  further  their  interests.  Russia  is  not  the 
only  country  where  such  transformations  are  habitual,  but  in 
Russia  this  contrast  between  the  seasons  of  life — youth  and 
maturity — appear  prompter  and  more  marked  than  elsewhere. 
Maybe,  in  matters  concerning  politics,  the  Russian,  with  his 
practical  sense,  sooner  becomes  undeceived  regarding  revolutionary 
vagaries,  is  more  quickly  struck  with  the  disproportion  between 
the  aim  and  the  means  of  the  agitators.  Maybe,  again,  we  have 
here  another  trait  of  the  national  character,  a  new  indication  of  its 
propensity  to  fall  from  one  extreme  into  the  other.  Anyhow,  there 
are  few  countries  where  parents  and  children  have  so  much  diffi- 
culty in  understanding  one  another.  In  this  respect  the  pictures 
drawn  by  Turgudnief  in  his  Fathers  and  Sons  are  in  great  part 
true  even  now.  At  the  contact  of  real  life,  the  practical  and 
positive  instincts,  as  well  as  the  egotistical,  usually  restune  the 
upper  hand  over  revolutionary  romance  and  utilitarian  idealism, 
until  the  latter  are  completely  choked  up  or  waved  away  into 
the  quietude  of  dreamland,  where  the  most  reckless  theories  do 
not  interfere  with  the  most  matter-of-fact  prudence.  Hence  so 
many  young  utopists  swearing  to  demolish  everything,  and  so 
many   mature   men  resignedly  bearing  everything ;    hence,   in 


2l6      THE  EMPIRE   OF   THE    TSARS  AND   THE  RUSSIANS. 

one  word,  so  many  Russians  with  whom  ideas  do  not  interfere 
with  material  interests,  with  whom  the  most  daring  radicalism 
jogs  along  comfortably  with  the  care  of  a  fortune  and  the  vulgar 
anxieties  about  a  career.  True,  such  a  moral  collapse  after  the 
sure  excitation  of  several  years  is  only  too  natural,  no  matter 
where  :  has  not  France  herself,  after  each  of  her  revolutions,  had 
her  hours  of  exhaustion  and  prostration.  The  phenomenon  is, 
nevertheless,  to  be  noted  in  Russia.  In  the  Russian  soul  dis- 
couragement seems  to  follow  ever  close  at  the  heels  of  enthusiasm, 
dejection  on  exaltation.  With  whom  lies  the  fault? — with  the 
political  rigime  or  with  the  people's  temperament?  Perchance 
with  both ! 

With  the  Russians  nihilism  and  radicalism  are  mostly  a  matter 
of  age ;  it  might  be  called  a  disease  of  childhood, — and  that  would 
be  true,  not  only  of  individuals,  but  of  the  nation  at  large.*  It  is 
owing  to  his  intellectual  and  political  youth,  to  his  country's 
political  inexperience,  that  the  Russian  is  so  eager  on  so  many 
questions,  in  the  pursuit  of  daring  speculations,  so  scornful  of 
other  people's  experience,  so  confiding  in  the  easy  achievement 
of  a  social  regeneration.  To  this  propensity  is  added  a  secret 
feeling  of  conceit.  Even  while  accepting  the  ideas  of  the  West, 
the  Russian  likes  to  magnify  them,  he  takes  pleasure  in  overdoing 
things,  and  pride  in  overleaping  the  West,  in  revolutionary  as 
well  as  other  matters.  Being  engaged  in  growing  when  the  other 
nations  had  long  been  grown  up,  compelled  to  be  their  pupil,  and 

*  A  humoristic  writer  with  tendencies  at  once  national  and  aristocratic, 
Prince  Mesh-tch^rsky,  has  given  in  a  pamphlet.  Exposing  the  Times,  1879, 
a  pathological  explanation  of  nihilism,  which,  paradoxical  though  it  be,  is 
not  wholly  devoid  of  truth.  According  to  him  it  is  a  sort  of  neurosis,  pro- 
duced by  anaemia  caused  by  the  lack  of  muscular  exercise  in  the  schools. 
It  were  easy  to  generalize  the  observation,  and  to  say  that,  aside  from  the 
lack  of  equilibrium  between  the  bodily  exercises  and  those  of  the  intellect, 
bad  hygienic  conditions,  the  students'  poor  fare,  and  their  being  for  the 
most  part  badly  lodged,  and  even  poorly  clad, — all  these  things  have  much 
to  do  with  the  morbid  cerebral  exaltation  of  so  many  young  people  of  both 
Bexes.     (See  Vol.  H.,  Book  VI.,  Ch.  II.) 


THE  NATIONAL    TEMPERAMENT  AND   CHARACTER.      21/ 

mortified  at  the  necessity,  he  longs  to  get  ahead  of  his  masters  in 
all  things.  The  new-comer  is  apt  to  think  his  elders  timid  and 
backward.  The  Russian  of  whatever  persuasion  frequently  feels 
towards  the  West  as  young  people  do  towards  mature  or  elderly 
men ;  even  while  enjoying  the  West's  ideas  or  lessons,  he  is 
inclined  to  think  of  it  as  lagging  behind,  vows  to  go  the  whole 
length  of  the  roads  and  ideas  that  same  West  has  opened  before 
him.  "  Between  ourselves,  to  what  amoimt  your  European 
nations?"  said  to  me,  fully  twenty  years  ago,  one  of  the  first 
Russians  I  have  known,  ' '  Old  fogies  who  have  given  all  they  had 
to  give.  It  would  be  unreasonable  to  expect  anything  more  from 
them.  When  our  turn  comes,  we  shall  not  have  much  diflSculty 
in  beating  them  hollow."  But  when  ze//// their  turn  come  ?  Many 
get  tired  waiting.  Unfortunately  this  piece  of  national  bragging 
is  far  from  always  implying  effort.  Too  many  Russians  await 
their  country's  grand  future  as  a  thing  that  must  come  on  its 
appointed  day,  as  a  fiiiit  ripening  on  the  tree.  Too  many  others, 
scorning  the  possible,  rail  at  the  liberties  of  which  the  West  offers 
them  the  models,  as  insufficient,  adopting  the  attitude  of  sceptics 
and  blasSs ;  while  the  most  impatient,  fancying  that  they  can 
revolutionize  the  country  with  one  wave  of  their  magic  wand, 
do  not  scruple  to  have  recourse  to  the  maddest,  most  odious 
machinations. 

The  radical  instincts  of  the  Russian  mind,  or,  if  preferred,  its 
propensity  to  novelties  and  bold  strokes  of  theory,  firequently 
manifest  themselves  in  other  things  besides  nihilism  as  practised 
in  schools,  or  the  ignorant  sects  of  the  lowest  classes.  I  will 
mention  one  instance  only,  taken  from  the  last  fifteen  or  twenty 
years.  I  mean  the  movement  in  favor  of  the  emancipation,  or, 
more  correctly,  the  independence  of  women.  *     Very  different 

•The  Russians  do  not  like  to  use  the  word  "emancipation"  in  this 
case.  They  will  tell  you  that,  with  them,  woman  is  emancipated,  since  the 
law  allows  her  to  manage  her  own  property  in  wedlock.  Therefore  this 
subject  is  referred  to,  in  Russia,  as  "  The  Woman  Question." 


2l8       THE  EMPIRE   OF   THE    TSARS  AND   THE  RUSSIANS. 

fix)ni  nihilism,  although  in  its  vagaries  it  associated  with  it  too 
closely  not  to  get  compromised  by  it,  this  remarkable  movement 
of  public  opinion  has  its  principle  partly  in  that  same  side  of  the 
Russian  character — the  contempt  for  prejudices,  the  taste  for 
daring  propositions  and  social  reforms.  In  the  beginning  of  the 
last  century  the  Russian  woman  was,  like  the  Turkish  woman  of 
to-day,  kept  under  lock  and  veil.  Nowadays  she,  like  man,  more 
than  man,  perhaps,  aspires  to  enfranchisement  and  liberty. 
Through  all  the  exaggerations  which  expose  them  to  ridicule, 
these  feminine  pretensions  are  less  out  of  place  and  less  surpris- 
ing than  they  would  be  elsewhere.  The  sex,  emancipated  by 
the  rough  hand  of  Peter  the  Great,  profited  most,  it  may  be,  by  a 
civilization  which,  in  giving  it  freedom,  singularly  flattered  its 
natural  tastes.  If  in  the  empire,  so  many  times  and  so  gloriously 
governed  by  women,  the  woman  of  the  people  is  still  kept  in  a 
sort  of  servitude,'  it  is  very  different  in  the  cultivated  classes. 
In  intelligence  and  power  of  will,  as  well  as  in  knowledge  and 
in  the  rank  she  holds  in  the  family,  the  Russian  woman  is  already 
the  equal  of  the  man  ;  in  some  ways  she  even  seems  superior  to 
him,  perhaps  through  the  fact  of  this  very  equality  which,  by 
exalting  one  sex,  seems  to  lower  the  other. 

This  remark  on  the  Russian  woman  might  be  extended  to  the 
Slav  woman  in  general.  Polish  society,  for  instance,  would  lend 
itself  to  similar  observations.  It  would  appear  as  though,  in  this 
race,  the  psychological  differences  between  the  sexes  are  at  times 
less  marked,  the  moral  or  intellectual  chasm  less  wide.  Between 
the  Slav  man  and  woman  there  is  not  imfrequently  a  sort  of  ex- 
change and  indeed  of  inversion  of  faculties  and  qualities.  If  the 
men  may  sometimes  be  accused  of  a  certain  femininity,  i.  e.y  of 
something  mobile,  flexible,  ductile,  or  impressionable  to  excess, 
the  women,  as  though  in  compensation,  have,  in  their  minds  and 
characters,  something  strong,  energical,  in  one  word,  virile,  which, 

^  Not  as  much  as  it  seems.     See  note  on  p.  1 16. 


THE  NATIONAL    TEMPERAMENT  AND   CHARACTER.      219 

far  from  robbing  them  of  any  portion  of  their  grace  and  charm, 
often  adds  to  them  a  strange  and  irresistible  attractiveness. 

Feeling  herself  the  equal  of  man  in  character  and  intellect, 
the  Russian  woman  is  inclined  to  claim  the  recognition  of  this 
equality,  with  its  advantages  and  drawbacks  :  equality  in  labor 
and  instruction,  equality  in  rights,  equality  in  duties.  Girls  and 
married  women — and  that  in  well-to-do  families  too — have  been 
known  to  take  pride  in  providing  for  themselves,  making  it  a  point 
to  earn  their  livelihood  without  the  assistance  of  their  husbands 
or  fathers.  Women,  and  especially  young  girls,  have  rushed 
into  all  the  careers  open  to  their  sex,  loudly  clamoring  for  new 
openings.*  The  passion  for  knowledge,  even  for  science,  has  been 
one  of  the  consequences  of  this  desire  for  moral  and  material 
independence.  Young  girls  crowded  the  courses  of  lectures, 
gymnasiums,  universities.  A  few  took  hold  of  the  classic  lan- 
guages— a  much  greater  number  went  in  for  natural  science  and 
medicine,  t 

The  revolutionary  spirit  could  not  fail  to  turn  to  its  own  profit 
these  pretensions  and  aspirations  of  a  sex  always  more  prone  than 
the  other  to  give  way  to  impulse  and  infatuation.     Among  these 

*  It  should  be  mentioned  that  this  feminine  movement  is  partly  due  to 
economic  causes  which  should  be  taken  into  account :  perturbations  in  many 
a  family  budget  in  consequence  of  the  emancipation  of  the  serfs,  growing 
difficulties  in  family  life  in  consequence  of  the  increase  in  prices ;  difficulty 
for  the  young  girls  of  a  certain  class  to  settle  in  their  own  circles,  especially 
in  cities,  where  the  number  of  marriages  has  greatly  diminished ;  lastly, 
certain  legal  restrictions,  which  allow  to  the  women  of  a  family  only  a  very 
small  share  of  the  paternal  inheritance. 

t  Under  the  pressure  of  similar  moral  or  economical  causes,  the  same 
longing  for  independence,  the  same  striving  to  provide  for  themselves,  have 
grown  up  among  the  young  girls  of  Hebrew  parentage.  In  the  number  of 
the  female  medical  students  registered  in  1878,  the  Jewesses  represented  -^^^. 
This  steadily  increasing  percentage  reached  y%%  in  1879,  /.  e.,  a  full  third  of 
the  total.  This  figure  is  accounted  for  by  the  fact  that,  owing  to  legal  ob- 
structions or  to  custom,  the  medical  career  is  about  the  only  one  open  to 
Jewish  women.  [See  RazsviSt  (The  DaztmJ,  an  Israelitic  organ,  Sept.  11, 
1880.]  Since  1887  the  Jews  have  been  systematically  excluded  from  the 
liigher  lines  of  instruction.     See  Vol.  III.,  Book  IV.,  Ch.  III. 


220      THE  EMPIRE  OF  THE    TSARS  AND   THE  RUSSIANS. 

women,  hungering  for  knowledge  and  liberty,  among  these  strong- 
minded  young  g^rls,  sometimes  too  careless  of  the  proprieties, 
who  combined  a  sort  of  instinctive  idealism  with  an  affected 
realism,  and  substituted  humanitarian  dreams  for  the  religion  of 
their  childhood,  the  coarse  seductions  of  nihilistic  radicalism  have 
made  all  the  more  victims  that  many  of  these  coursistes  or 
students  could  find  no  way  of  putting  their  studies  to  practical 
uses  and  making  a  livelihood  out  of  the  acquired  knowledge. 
The  evil  was  often  made  worse  by  the  remedies  which  distrust 
inopportunely  suggested  to  the  authorities,  who,  instead  of 
widening  the  field  of  feminine  activity,  in  some  cases  half  shut 
in  its  face  even  those  careers  which  they  had  but  lately  opened 
before  it.* 

Thus  it  was  that,  in  the  large  cities,  sprang  up  a  sort  of  femi- 
nine proletariate — ^if  the  word  may  be  applied  to  young  girls, 
well  informed,  enthusiastic,  more  diligent  and  usually  not,  less 
revolutionary  than  their  school  brethren.  The  West,  especially 
Ziirich  in  Switzerland,  has  lately  seen  numerous  specimens  of 
these  girl-students,  who  strove  to  eradicate  in  themselves  all 
the  qualities  natural  to  their  sex,  in  order  better  to  establish 
their  right  to  the  pursuits  of  the  other  sex, — of  these,  as  Shake- 
speare says,  unsexed  girls,  who,  the  better  to  rise  to  the  level  of 
men,  worked  hard  to  cease  being  women.  Many  noble  and  gen- 
erous natures  were  hopelessly  warped  and  worn  out  in  the  effort. 
The  most  ardent  and  energetic,  arrested  in  the  front  ranks  of  the 
conspirators,  in  the  flower  of  their  youth,  got  themselves  sent  off 
to  Siberia.  Others,  less  lofty  or  upright  of  soul,  fell  into  excesses, 
which  must  have  been  to  them  a  severer  punishment  still. 

*That  is  what  happened  about  medicine,  under  Alexander  III.,  as  well 
as  under  his  father.  The  government,  dreading  the  propaganda  which 
women  doctors  would  carry  on  in  the  rural  districts,  more  than  once  opposed 
the  appointment  of  a  great  number  of  them  by  the  provincial  assemblies 
(Zemstvo);  at  other  times,  and  notably  in  1882,  it  suppressed  the  special 
courses  of  medicine  for  women,  allowing,  however,  others  to  be  opened  by 
private  subscription. 


THE  NATIONAL    TEMPERAMENT  AND   CHARACTER.      221 

All  this  cannot  hinder  the  movement  in  favor  of  feminine 
emancipation  from  being  one  of  the  most  interesting  and  most 
characteristic  phenomena  of  contemporary  Russia.  Of  all  con- 
tinental states,  Russia,  by  this  side,  comes  up  nearest  to  the 
Anglo-Saxon  countries,  though  in  the  two  cases  claims  in  reality 
analogous  present  themselves  under  very  different  aspects.  If  a 
revolution  of  this  kind  is  ever  to  take  place,  Russia  will  doubtless 
be  one  of  the  first  countries  on  the  old  continent  to  give  the  new 
order  of  things  a  trial.'  In  the  meantime  she  has  already  made, 
in  the  matter  of  higher  female  education,  experiments  of  which 
some  might  serve  as  models  to  states  that  think  themselves  much 
more  advanced,*  The  Russian  mind  does  not  shrink  from  daring 
initiatives,  even  risky  ones.  From  that  side,  to  which  we  do  not 
much  look  for  examples,  we  shall  some  day  receive  more  than  one 
lesson. 

In  no  other  nation  have  the  traditions  of  the  past  at  one  and 
the  same  time  wielded  more  power  and  less  authority,  or  been 
venerated  more  superstitiously  below,  cast  off  more  scomftdly 
above.     At  the  two  extremities  of  the  same  people  the  opposite 

*  There  will  be  no  need  of  a  revolution.  There  would  be  no  "  woman 
question  "  but  for  the  mania  of  aping  the  West.  The  law  lays  no  restriction 
on  our  women ;  whatever  opposition  they  encounter  comes  from  public 
habit  and  prejudice,  and  these  are  by  no  means  stubborn  in  Russia;  the 
educated  Slav  is  not  conservative.  It  is  not  only  that  our  women  have  full 
control  of  their  property,  married  or  single,  from  the  age  of  eighteen  ;  they 
also  vote  in  local  elections — for  instance,  when  the  so-called  "  marshal  of 
the  nobility  "  is  appointed,  a  functionary  whose  duty  it  is  to  represent  the 
nobility  of  each  government  (province)  on  gala  occasions,  to  look  after  their 
interests  as  a  class,  to  be  their  spokesman  and  entertainer.  The  right  to 
vote  on  these  and  other  public  local  occasions  is  conferred  by  a  property 
census,  from  which  women  are  not  excluded,  only  it  is  customary  for  them 
to  send  in  their  vote  in  writing  or  by  power  of  attorney,  as  their  presence 
would  be  undesirable  at  these  usually  pretty  festive  celebrations. 

*  The  "BestAjef  Courses"  (pronounce  they  as  in  the  French /<?//)  in 
Petersburgh,  the  courses  of  Mr.  Guerrier  in  Moscow,  both  founded  by  private 
endowment,  gave  young  girls  a  genuine  "  higher  education."  To  these  free 
institutions  the  state  substituted,  in  1888-9,  higher  courses  for  boarders  and 
day  scholars,  the  access  to  which  is  much  less  easy. 


322      THE  EMPIRE  OF   THE    TSARS  AND   THE  RUSSIANS. 

exaggerations  meet.  Of  all  men  the  Russian,  once  rid  of  his  tra- 
ditional ideas,  of  his  national  prejudices,  is  the  most  completely 
freed.  In  this  respect  no  other  can  be  compared  to  him  but  the 
Jew,  the  modem  IsraeUte.  He,  too,  at  the  contact  with  aliens, 
passes  from  the  extreme  of  the  spirit  of  veneration  to  the  extreme 
of  free-thinking,  from  the  oriental  traditionalism,  to  which  the 
bulk  of  his  brethren  stubbornly  cling,  to  the  most  daring  feats  of 
the  spirit  of  innovation.  By  one  of  those  contrasts  perpetually 
recurring  in  Russia,  while  the  peasant,  like  the  humble  oriental 
Jew,  remains  obstinately  conservative,  guardian  of  rites  and 
forms,  the  man  of  the  cultured  classes  glories  in  having  cast 
behind  him  all  the  old  traditions  together  with  the  old  creeds. 
Some  people  liken  the  Russian  intellect  to  those  virgin  steppes, 
where  the  ages  have  left  no  imprint  and  which  have  treasured  up 
for  the  future  all  their  fertility.  We  shall  see  in  the  following 
chapters  in  what  sense  such  beliefs  are  justifiable.  At  all  events, 
we  can  say  even  now  that  the  feeble  hold  of  national  tradition,  the 
poorness  of  the  inheritance  bequeathed  to  Russia  by  ten  centuries, 
have  something  to  do  with  the  radical  propensities  of  the  Russian 
mind  and  "nihilism," — or  rather,  to  borrow  a  barbaric  but 
graphic  word  from  Joseph  de  Maistre,  the  nothingism  (rienisme)y 
more  or  less  thought  out,  of  the  contemporary  generations. 


BOOK  IV, 
HISTORY  AND  THE  ELEMENTS  OE  CIVILIZATION. 


CHAPTER  I. 

Has  Russia  an  Historical  Inheritance  ? — Is  it  True  that  she  DiflFers  from  the 
West  by  the  Principles  of  her  Civilization  ? — Various  Theories  on  this 
Subject — Slavophils  and  Occidentals — Origin  and  Tendencies  of  the 
Slavophils — In  what  Way  the  Apologists  of  Russian  Civilization  Meet 
the  Detractors  of  Russia — Secret  Affinities  between  Slavophilism  and 
Nihilism  —  The  Three  Conceptions  of  the  National  History  and 
^Destinies. 

After  wandering  over  the  Russian  soil  and  successively 
examining  into  the  genealogical  titles  and  the  national  temper- 
ament of  the  Russian  Slav,  we  should  like  to  find  out  what 
elements  have  been  brought  to  him  by  history,  how  the  ages  in 
their  cotirse  have  confirmed  or  corrected  the  influences  of  clime 
and  race,  what  features  they  have  added  to  the  character  of  the 
people,  what  bases  given  to  its  culttire  and  institutions.  ' '  We 
know  enough  of  the  history  of  barbarous  times  when  we  know 
that  they  were  barbarous, ' '  says  one  of  the  eighteenth-century 
philosophers,  referring  to  Russia  before  Peter  the  Great.*  This 
sa3ring  bears  the  stamp  of  the  ignorant  and  naive  presumption 
which,  in  the  matter  of  historical  and  political  sciences,  has  led 
that  century  into  so  many  mistakes  and  deceptions. 

The  Russians  themselves  will  say  at  times  they  have  no 
history.     Some,   like  Tchaaddyef  of  old,    deplore  the    fact    in 

*  Condillac,  Modem  History,  vol.  vi. 
223 


224      THE  EMPIRE   OF   THE    TSARS  AND   THE  RUSSIANS 

melancholy  strain,  passionate  and  eloquent,*  nor  can  anything 
console  them  for  having  missed  the  most  brilliant  epochs  of 
European  life,  or  allay  their  fears  that,  for  lack  of  the  same  trials 
and  upbringing,  their  country  never  can  achieve  the  same  civili- 
zation, for  that  a  nation  without  a  past  is  also  without  a  future. 
Others,  more  numerous,  boldly  congratulate  themselves  on  the 
same  fact,  boasting  of  their  freedom  from  the  trammels  of  all 
tradition  and  all  prejudice,  from  the  fetters  of  a  past  in  which,  in 
spite  of  her  revolutions,  old  Europe  remains  entangled,  f  Look- 
ing on  all  the  bequests  of  past  ages  as  on  so  many  burdens  and 
hindrances  for  the  present  generations,  they  make  light  of  the 
inheritance  left  them  by  their  forbears,  and  rejoice  that  they  have 
received  from  them  nothing  worth  handing  down  to  their  chil- 
dren. They  delight  in  considering  their  country'  as  free  land,  as 
a  tabula  rasa,  on  which  science  and  reason  are  free  to  construct, 
with  materials  all  new,  the  building  of  the  future.  This  point  of 
view,  dear  to  radicalism,  is  the  one  which  most  revolutionists 
hold.  In  that,  it  must  be  confessed,  they  really  do  little  else  than 
appropriate  the  views  or  imitate  the  examples  of  the  authorities, 
who,  ever  since  Peter  the  Great,  have  been  the  first  to  teach  the 
subjects  to  make  stable  litter  of  the  national  past  and  history. 

In  a  state  which,  in  1869,  celebrated  its  tenth  centennial,  such 
views  cannot  be  accepted  literally.  Many  of  those  Russians  who 
express  them  would  be  justly  indignant  if  they  were  taken  at 
their  word.  If  a  past  of  a  thousand  years  has  merely  littered  the 
national  soil  with  useless  rubbish  or  brittle  structures  lacking  base 
and  cement,  it  is  that  past  itself  which  should  tell  us  the  reason. 

*  "  We  belong  to  none  of  the  great  families  of  nations,  either  Oriental 
or  Occidental ;  we  have  the  traditions  of  neither.  We  live,  so  to  speak, 
outside  of  time,  untouched  by  the  culture  of  mankind,"  etc. — Letters  of 
Tchaad&yef,  1836.  For  these  letters,  written  in  French,  the  author  was 
officially  declared  insane.  (See  Herzen,  Revolutionary  Ideas,  and  Pypin, 
Characteristics  of  Literary  Views,  Petersburgh,  1869). 

t  In  his  Apology  of  a  Madman,  subsequently  written,  Tchaaddyef  him- 
self, changing  his  mind  about  the  gloomy  pessimism  of  his  letters,  partly 
adheres  to  this  opinion. 


HISTORY  AND    THE  ELEMENTS  OF  CIVILIZATION.      22$ 

The  taste  for  historical  studies,  the  crown  of  honor  of  the  nine- 
teenth century,  made  itself  felt  in  Russia  as  well  as  in  the  West. 
For  the  last  fifty  years,  especially  the  last  twenty-five  years,  a 
band  of  historians  who  in  nothing — number,  intelligence,  or  con- 
scientiousness— are  behind  those  of  England,  France,  or  Germany, 
study  with  passionate  zeal  the  annals  of  their  country,  and  seek  in 
its  past  the  key  to  its  destinies.* 

Russia  has  a  long  history,  but  the  chain  of  her  national  exist- 
ence has  once  or  twice  been  so  rudely  snapped  that  it  is  an  arduous 
task  even  yet  to  reunite  the  severed  links,  and  there  remains  in 
the  popular  consciousness  a  sort  of  blank.  This  history  the 
Russian  people  have  sufiered  rather  than  made  ;  it  was  not,  as  in 
the  countries  of  the  West,  the  people's  own  personal  work,  sprung 
from  the  free  development  of  their  national  genius  ;  it  was  passive 
rather  than  active.  In  this  respect  the  history  of  Russia  resem- 
bles not  so  much  the  histories  of  European  nations  as  the  annals 
of  Asiatic  ones.  Whether  it  came  fi-om  abroad  or  from  above, 
from  aliens  or  from  its  own  rulers,  it  often  remained  all  external 
or  superficial ;  it  has,  so  to  speak,  passed  over  the  people's  head, 
and,  having  at  times  bowed  it  low,  still  weighs  heavily  on  its 
shoulders. 

It  is  neither  in  the  climate  nor  in  the  race,  it  is  in  history  and 

geography  that  we  should  seek  the  causes  of  the  inferiority  of 

Russian  civilization.     Many  foreigners,  the  Catholics  especially, 

account  for  it  by  the  adoption  of  a  barren  form  of  Christianity  ; 

others,  chiefly  Germans,  by  the  absence  of  Teutonic  influence,  a 

double  defect  sometimes  lumped  under  the  designation  of  hyzantin- 

istn.    Some  see  the  cause  of  it  in  the  lack  of  the  classical  heritage, 

*  In  the  foremost  rank  of  contemporary  historians  are  especially  dis- 
tinguished :  Solovidf  (died  in  1879),  Kostomdrof  (died  in  1885),  Bestfijef- 
Rimnin,  Zabi61in,  Ilovaisky,  etc.  Contrary  to  what  is  usual  in  other  coun- 
tries, most  Russian  historians  bravely  undertake  a  general  history  of  their 
coiintry  since  Rurik's  times,  and  each  usually  has  an  historical,  more  or  less 
original,  theory  of  his  own.  As  very  few  reach  the  end  of  their  task,  it 
follows  that  the  initial  periods  of  Russian  history  have  perhaps  be-n  more 
studied  than  the  epochs  nearer  our  own. 


226      THE  EMPIRE  OF   THE    TSARS  AND   THE  RUSSIANS. 

the  greater  number  in  the  Mongolian  domination.  The  Russian 
historians  everlastingly  face  the  same  problem  ;  placed  between 
Europe  and  Asia,  Russia  is,  so  to  speak,  the  offspring  of  both. 
But  of  which  is  she  morally  or  politically  the  daughter  ?  We  have 
to  ask  the  same  question  in  its  bearing  on  social  development,  only 
as  regards  soil  and  race  :  In  what  is  Russia  European,  in  what 
Asiatic,  in  what  merely  Slav  and  Russian  ?  Have  the  centuries 
of  her  long  infancy  disposed  her,  by  an  appropriate  education,  to 
European  life,  or  have  they  fashioned  her  for  a  culture  of  her  own 
— original,  substantially  distinct  from  that  of  the  West  ?  To  bor- 
row the  expression  used  by  a  native  writer,  does  the  difference 
between  Russia  and  Europe  lie  in  the  degree  or  in  the  principle 
itself  of  civilization  ?  * 

That  is  the  point  round  which  revolve  most  of  the  serious  ques- 
tions that  have  come  up  in  Russia.  The  question  under  discussion 
is  no  less  a  thing  than  the  vocation  of  a  country,  of  a  people.  To 
acclimate  a  civilization,  it  is  not  sufficient  that  the  soil  should  be 
apt,  it  is  imperative  that  the  nation  into  which  it  is  transplanted 
should  be  prepared  by  the  elements  of  culture.  When  it  is 
the  Russian  people  we  have  to  deal  with,  so  long  buffeted 
between  opposing  influences,  the  question  is  far  from  being  a 
merely  theoretical  one ;  it  is  a  live  one,  the  solution  of  which 
awaits  a  practical  application,  and  must  decide  the  way  the  coun- 
try shall  go. 

What  we  must  find  out  is  this  :  what  attitude  is  Russia  to 
assume  towards  Europe  ?  Is  she  to  consider  herself  Europe's 
pupil  ?  as  such  to  submit  to  Western  schooling  and  persist  in 
imitating  and  adapting  Western  things  ?  Or,  on  the  contrary,  is 
she  to  proclaim  herself  a  stranger  to  the  West  ?  give  up  borrowing 
things  which  suit  neither  her  genius  nor  her  temperament,  and 
stand  up  unfettered,  once  more  her  own  self? '  On  the  way  that  this 
fundamental  conception  of  her  national  destiny  is  decided  depend 

*  Youri  Sam^n  :  The  Jesuits  and  their  Relations  to  Russia,  p.  364. 
'  See  appendix  to  this  chapter. 


HISTORY  AND    THE  ELEMENTS  OF  CIVILIZATION.      22'J 

all  the  views  the  Russians  shall  hold  on  their  civil  and  political 
life.  Accordingly  it  is  on  the  view  they  take  of  their  history  that 
their  diversity  of  opinions  is  mostly  based.  Historical  parties  take 
the  place  of  political  parties,  or,  rather,  the  tendencies  which  are 
in  the  stead  of  parties  have  for  their  point  of  departure  a  different 
conception  of  their  national  history.  Such  is  the  substance  of  the 
battle  which,  under  various  names,  has  been  raging,  ever  since 
Peter  the  Great,  between  the  Old- Russians  and  their  adversaries, 
between  Moscow  and  St.  Petersburgh,  between  the  Slavophils  and 
the  Occidentals.'^ 

In  the  eyes  of  the  Zdpadniki,  or  partisans  of  the  West,  there ; 
is,  in  Russia's  past  and  her  traditions,  nothing  that  need  radically  \ 
separate  her  from  Europe.     She  has  no  culture  of  her  own,  really  • 
original,  national,  indigenous  ;  she  is  only  behindhand  with  her  ' 
Western  neighbors.     She  still  is  a  mediaeval  state,  an  ancien 
rigime  state  ;  but  there  is  no  reason  why  she  should  not  appro- 
priate all  the  culture  of  more  advanced  nations,  why  she  should  not 
do  for  Teutono-Ivatin  civilization  what  the  Teutonic  peoples  once 
did  for  Roman  civilization. 

In  the  eyes  of  the  Slavophils,  on  the  contrary,  and  of  many 
patriots  instinct  with  the  same  spirit,  Russia  is  substantially  dif- 
ferent from  Europe.      Having  received  from  the  past  peculiar 
institutions,  she  is,  by  her  origin,  her  beginnings,  and  bringing 
up,  by  the  elements  of  her  culture,  called  to  entirely  different  for- 
times.     In  the  manner  in  which  her  land  has  been  peopled,  in  > 
which  her  state  has  been  founded,  her  territories  have  been  occu-^^ 
pied, — in  her  conception  of  family,  property,  authority,  Russian 
possesses  the  principle  of  a  novel  civilization,  and,  naturally,  if  I 
local  patriotism  is  to  be  believed,  of  a  better  balanced  civilization,  j 
more  stable  and  harmonious,  more  really  capable  of  progress  ad 
infinitum  than  the  senile  and  effete  Occidental  civilization,  threat- 

*  "  Occidentals  "  {Zdpadniki)  :  partisans  of  European  imitation.  As  to 
the  name  of  "  Slavophils  "  {SlavianopMly),  it  is  frequently  mistaken  in  the 
West  for  a  synonym  of  "  Panslavists." 


228      THE  EMPIRE   OF   THE    TSARS  AND   THE  RUSSIANS. 

ened,  as  the  latter  already  is,  with  decomposition,  as  a  restdt 
Vof  its  internal  conflicts. 

One  of  the  most  curious  phenomena  of  Russian  life  in  the  nine- 
teenth century  is  undoubtedly  "Slavophilism."  The  ascendancy 
it  has  gained  over  the  contemporary  thinking  heads  is  entirely 
out  of  proportion  with  the  number  of  its  adepts.  The  little  Slavo- 
phil Church,  with  its  exclusive  beliefe,  its  stiff"  dogmas,  numbers 
as  yet  few  declared  followers,  few  faithful  orthodox  believers ; 
but  the  sort  of  national  apotheosis  which  lies  at  the  bottom  of  it 
draws  to  it  many  more  or  less  imconscious  proselytes,  among  men 
apparently  strangers  to  Slavic  fetishism  of  any  kind.  Then,  too, 
one  not  unfrequently  stumbles  on  some  Slavophil  dogma  or  super- 
stition, among  people  of  the  world,  or  writers  who  make  it  a  point 
to  have  nothing  to  do  with  such  idolatry.  As  sometimeshappens 
in  the  domain  of  thought,  the  Slavophil  formulas  and  positions 
were  shattered  in  the  shock  of  discussion,  but  the  contents,  the 
spiritual  essence,  escaped  out  of  the  broken  vessels  and  spread  far 
away  into  the  air. 

A  remarkable  and  characteristic  thing  is  that  this  Russian 
school,  which  claims  that  it  is  to  shake  off"  the  intellectual  domina- 
tion of  Europe,  was  itself  formed  under  Occidental  impulses,  imder 
the  influence  of  European  thought.  Not  in  the  direct  study  of 
national  history  or  popular  life,  but  in  the  study  and  pondering 
of  foreign  writers,  have  the  founders  of  Slavophilism  taken  their 
method,  their  dialects,  and,  indirectly,  their  ideas. 

This  vindication  of  the  Russian  spirit,  this  rebelling  against 
foreigA  sway,  was  itself,  at  its  origin,  a  loan  or  imitation,  an  adap- 
tation of  foreign  things.  The  period  between  1830  and  1840  was 
one  of  debating,  of  theoretical  speculations  and  hypotheses  of  all 
kinds,  a  time  when  everywhere,  but  more  especially  in  Germany, 
systems  sprang  up  full-fledged,  philosophical,  historical,  political. 
And  it  was  from  German  metaphysics,  from  Hegel's  logic  and 
philosophy  of  history,  that  the  Slavophils  of  Moscow  took  the  first 
elements  of  their  ideas,  the  shape  and  mould  of  their  doctrines. 


HISTORY  AND    THE  ELEMENTS  OF  CIVILIZATION.      229 

To  Russia  and  the  Slavs  they  applied  Hegel's  proceedings,  claim- 
ing for  their  race  and  country  the  overlordship  which  the  Prussian 
philosopher,  in  the  history  of  mankind,  ascribed  to  the  Teutonic  races. 
Slavophilism  was  entirely  a  birth  of  the  speculative  spirit,  originally 
merely  a  combination  of  the  abstractions  of  German  metaphysics 
with  literary  romanticism,  and  with  the  reUgious  mysticism,  this 
latter  representing  the  contribution  of  the  national  element.  The 
originality  and  virtual  superiority  of  the  Russian  or  Graeco-Slavic 
over  the  Occidental  civilization  were  proclaimed  a  priori,  by  de- 
duction. Later  on,  in  order  to  adapt  the  facts  to  their  theory, 
these  philosophers  of  the  national  idea  began  to  turn  their  atten- 
tion towards  history  and  the  people. 

Putting  away  metaphysics,  the  Slavophils  began  to  search  in 
the  religion  and  the  character  of  the  people,  in  the  regulation  of 
property,  and  in  the  constitution  of  authority,  for  the  principles 
on  which  rests  Russian  life.  In  their  quest  after  all  the  original 
features  of  the  national  civilization,  they  solemnly  condemned  the 
moral  subjection  of  the  Petersburgian  period  ;  they  declared  the 
foreign  intellectual  yoke  all  the  more  intolerable  that  Etu-ope, 
whose  pupil  Russia  avowed  herself,  was  going  full  tilt  the  way  of 
decadence. 

Russian  history,  at  that  time  but  little  studied,  lent  itself  better 
than  any  other  to  the  vagaries  of  systematizing.  To  this  day,  many 
fine  works  notwithstanding,  it  is  for  many  writers  a  field  open  to 
any  and  all  hypotheses.  In  this  career,  the  Slavophils  were,  by 
their  point  of  departure,  exposed  to  commit  remarkable  blunders. 
They  were  more  than  once  to  mistake  for  essential  traits  of  the 
social  and  political  life  of  the  Slavs  things  which,  in  the  eyes  of 
their  adversaries,  were  only  survivals  of  an  obsolete  past  crumbled 
to  ruins  long  ago.  They  were  to  proclaim  as  signs  of  race  or 
nationality  what  ofttimes  was  but  a  token  of  infancy  or  childhood. 
They  brought  out  into  relief  all  the  real  or  imaginary  differences 
which,  in  the  past,  had  distinguished  Russia  firom  the  "West,  and 
of  all  these  distinctive  traits,  more  or  less  well-sorted,  they  made 


230      THE  EMPIRE   OF   THE    TSARS  AND    THE  RUSSIANS. 

up  the  elements  of  a  Russian  civilization.  With  the  help  of  a 
little  generalizing  they  discovered  and  endowed  their  native  land 
with  a  civilization  of  its  own  ;  indigenous,  complete  in  its  prin- 
ciple, though  abruptly  arrested  in  its  growth  by  the  hapless 
' '  Petersburgh  period. ' '  This  culture  is,  after  a  fashion,  European, 
but  not  after  the  manner  of  Western  Europe — of  Italy,  France, 
England,  Germany.  To  Teutono-Latin  culture,  a  Graeco-Slavic 
culture  was  opposed,  of  which  the  broad  and  solid  basis  had  been 
preserved  intact  in  the  lower  layers  of  the  people  below  the  surface, 
where  nationality  had  been  undone  by  imitation  of  foreign  things, 
j  Once  they  had  entered  on  this  way,  the  Slavophils  were  not  con- 
f  tent  with  bringing  into  relief  the  features  by  which  Russia  differs 
1  from  the  West ;  not  content  with  pointing  out  differences  too  great 
to  stand  in  need  of  exaggeration.  They  delight  in  transforming 
this  diversity  into  opposition  ;  they  undertake  to  prove  that  the 
national  traditions  are  incompatible  with  the  principles  that  rule 
Occidental  life.* 

The  long  and  arduous  campaign  of  Bulgaria,  the  "  attempts  " 
of  the  nihilists,  ascribed  to  European  contagion,  the  advent  of 
Alexander  III,,  loudly  greeted  in  Moscow  as  that  of  the  old- 
Russian  spirit  incarnate,  had  restored  to  the  but  lately  obsolete 
inheritors  of  Slavophilism  a  fleeting  ascendancy.  In  the  life  of 
nations  there  come  hours  of  patriotic  fever  and  public  ang^sh, 
when  all  that  bears  a  national  semblance  easily  commands 
applause.  The  battles  fought  on  behalf  of  the  Bulgars  tem- 
porarily raised  to  high  honor  on  the  other  bank  of  the  Pruth  all 
that,  in  name  or  appearance,  is  Slavic,  just  as  in  Germany  the 
struggle  against  Napoleon  brought  into  vogue  once  more  all  that 
was  or  seemed  Teutonic.  In  Russia  this  tendency  is,  at  certain 
epochs,  all  the  more  urgent  for  the  many  reasons  which  patriotism 

*  That  is  what  Aksikof  did  in  his  paper,  Rus,  up  to  his  death  (1886), 
what  more  than  one  writer  did  even  outside  the  circle  of  "  neo-Slavophils  " — 
Prince  Vassiltchikof  for  instance.  (Landholding  and  Farming,  St.  Peters- 
burgh, 1878,  pp.  24,  30,  and  ff.) 


HISTORY  AND    THE  ELEMENTS  OF  CIVILIZATION.      23 1 

has  at  others  to  feel  discouraged  and  apprehensive.  National 
feeling  gets  wound  up  the  more  wilHngly  for  the  self-delusion 
it  has  to  practise  in  order  to  work  itself  up  to  sticking  point. 
That  is  what  excuses  the  ranting  of  certain  Russians  anent  the 
superiority  of  their  Slavic  culture,  the  intellectual  decadence  of 
Western  Europe,  its  political  decomposition  and  rottenness. 

Slavophihsm  was  bom,  under  Nicolas,  of  a  violent  and  legiti- 
matcfecoir  against  the  long  intellectual  enslavement  of  the 
eighteenth  century.  'By  re-awakening  in  the  country's  breast 
reverence  for  its  history  and  traditions  and  a  liking  for  its  national 
antiquities,  by  winning  the  attention  and  aflfection  of  the  higher 
classes  back  to  the  mujik  and  the  rural  population,  by  serving 
as  counterweight  to  the  systematic  copyists  of  the  West  and  the 
innovators  of  the  bureaucracy  at  St.  Petersburgh,  the  Slavophils 
have  rendered  their  country  a  most  undoubted  service.  Thanks 
to  them,  Russia  has  recovered  her  national  consciousness,  which 
threatened  to  become  obliterated  under  a  vain  and  sterile  cosmo- 
politism. At  one  time  it  was  a  wholesome  reaction  of  "  home  " 
against  "abroad."  With  nations  even  more  than  with  indi- 
viduals, the  feeling  of  personality  is  a  great  power,  but  on  the 
understanding  that  the  over-excited  national  feeling  do  not 
degenerate  into  a  sort  of  intellectual  "Chauvinism,"  or  moral 
protectionism.  When  it  goes  the  length  of  depreciating  and  con- 
temning all  that  is  foreign,  it  becomes  the  worst  adviser  a  nation, 
no  matter  how  great,  can  have ;  but  in  no  country  could  this 
exclusive  self-admiration,  self-deification,  be  so  baneful  as  in 
Russia.'  In  his  most  exaggerated  aberrations,' the  least  moderate 
of  Slavophils  is  not  more  laughable  than  the  Teutonic  patriot, 

■^  Is  it  not  rather  the  only  safeguard  when  a  nation's  righteous  self- 
consciousness  is  in  danger  of  being  sneered  away  from  abroad,  stamped 
out  by  self-abasement  within  ?  It  is  only  a  wholesome  reaction.  The  quali-. 
ties  demanded  of  nations  are  different  from  those  that  become  individuals. 
Amiable  qualities  are  not  necessary — only  such  as  secure  the  existence, — 
and  self-assertion  is  the  most  directly  to  the  point.  We  all  admire  England 
for  "  not  knowing  when  she  is  beaten." 


232       THE  EMPIRE   OF   THE    TSARS  AND    THE  RUSSIANS. 

who,  in  the  wide  modern  world,  perceives  nothing  but  German 
culture,  German  science,  Teutonic  influence.  But  of  the  two  the 
Slavophil  is  certainly  the  worst  inspired  as  regards  the  good  of  his 
country,  for  in  preaching  the  contempt  of  the  West  and  of  the 
nations  out  of  which  have  come  art,  science,  and  the  whole  of 
modem  civilization,  he  runs  the  risk  of  teaching  Russia  the  con- 
tempt of  all  these  things  themselves,  and  of  liberty  and  progress 
to  boot.  Thus  it  is  that  Slavophilism  and  all  analogous  doctrines 
involuntarily  join  hands  on  one  side  with  revolutionary  nihilism, 
and  on  the  other  with  the  Western  detractors  of  Russia. 

When,  under  pretence  of  bringing  out  the  originality  of  their 
country,  Russians  are  not  content  with  accentuating  the  really 
existing  features  of  their  national  individuality,  but  insist  on 
placing  Russian  history  and  culture,  Slavic  genius  and  society,  in 
complete  opposition,  in  radical  incompatibility,  with  European 
civilization,  they  unawares  arrive  at  the  same  position,  the  same 
conclusions,  as  their  foreign  opponents  and  contemners.  The 
Slavophil  of  Moscow  echoes  the  Russophobes  of  London  or  Pesth, 
who  represent  the  "Muscovite"  as  substantially  foreign  to 
European  civilization,  as  incapable  of  appropriating  it  as  the 
Ottoman  of  Stamboul.  The  extremes  of  eulogizing  and  depreciat- 
ing meet,  as  other  extremes  do.  There  is  nothing  in  that  to  flatter 
the  reasonable  patriotism  of  the  Russians,  for  Western  civilization 
has  traversed  crises  enough,  has  taken  strength  enough  from  its 
various  revolutions,  to  have  little  cause  to  dread  the  scorn  of  those 
who  take  pride  in  remaining  strangers  to  it,  let  such  pretensions 
come  from  Stamboul,  Pekin,  or  elsewhere. 

Another  no  less  remarkable  thing :  Moscovite  Slavophilism, 
by  its  point  of  departure  as  well  as  by  its  attitude  towards  Occi- 
dental civilization,  is  not  without  some  analogy  with  the  revolu- 
tionary nihilism  which  would  appear  to  be  the  opposite  pole  of 
Russian  thought.  This  name,  "nihilism,"  which  it  repudiates, 
Russian  radicalism  has  earned  chiefly  perhaps  by  its  disrespect 
to  that  civilization  on  which  it  has    more  than  once  passed 


HISTOR  Y  AND    THE  ELEMENTS  OF  CIVILIZA  TION.      233 

condemnation,  and  to  which  it  also  loves  to  oppose  an  ideal 
Russia,  if  not  of  the  past,  then  of  the  future.  It  was  the  classico- 
Christian  culture,  as  it  came  out  of  the  Teutono-I^atin  peoples, 
that  the  fathers  of  nihilism  chiefly  denounced.  What  they 
aimed  at,  what  they  denied,  was  not  so  much  Russia  as  the 
West.  Russia,  her  customs  and  traditions,  most  modem  Rus- 
sians had  long  ceased  to  believe  in  ;  in  this  respect  all  but 
the  Slavophils  had  long  been  nihilists.  They  had  pinned  their 
faith  on  Western  culture,  with  which  they  strove  to  become 
impregnated.  In  the  beginning  of  Nicolas'  reign,  as  in  the 
eighteenth  century,  the  civilization  of  which  Peter  the  Great  and 
Catherine  had  been  able  to  import  only  the  outer  shell  and 
formtilas,  still  was  to  the  literary  world  a  reUg^on  which,  outside 
of  a  few  belated  conservatives,  counted  in  Russia  neither  incred- 
ulous nor  indifferent  spirits.  The  young  generation  were  more 
fervent  believers  than  the  Occidentals  themselves  in  the  lights  and 
the  liberties  that  came  from  the  West ;  they  believed,  with  the 
ardor  of  a  neophyte's  faith,  in  the  efficiency  and  sacredness  of 
"  the  principles  of '89,"  in  the  infallibility  of  the  human  revela- 
tion brought  by  the  great  Revolution, 

Towards  the  middle  of  the  century,  a  sudden  and  violent  re- 
vulsion occurred,  as  we  have  already  seen,  in  the  Russian  intellect ; 
but  this  evolution  was  not  always  to  turn  out  favorably  to  the 
Slavophils  and  the  admirers  of  the  national  past.     On  a  closer 
view  of  this  civilization,  to  which  he  looked  for  salvation,  when  he 
touched  its  failings  and  heard  it  cursed  and  denied  by  many  of 
those  who  had  been  nurtured  by  it,  the  Russian  began  to  doubt 
it.     He  saw  that,  against  ills  and  suffering,  it  had  only  uncertain 
remedies  or  idle  palliatives,  and  its  liberty,  its  science,  its  wealth, 
appeared  to  him  but  as  a  lie,  a  cheat.      All  the  institutions  and 
formulas  he  had  learned  to  reverence,  became  to  him  a  hypocriti-  I 
cal  and  sacrilegious  profanation  of  the  truths  half  perceived  in  the  1 
days  of  simple,  youthful  fervor.    The  modem  Scythian  fancied  he  1 
had  found  out  the  emptiness  of  that  Graeco-I/atin  culture  whose 


234      THE  EMPIRE   OF  THE    TSARS  AND   THE  RUSSIANS. 

splendor  had  dazzled  him,  and,  with  his  race's  versatility  and 
proneness  to  rush  from  one  to  the  other  extreme,  with  the  bittei 
wrath  of  a  believer  undeceived  and  ashamed  of  his  long  credulity, 
he  blasphemed  what  he  had  worshipped  but  yesterday.  The 
Russian  of  the  nineteenth  century  renounced  his  childhood's  faith 
as  a  puerile  superstition ;  he  made  it  his  study  and  pleasure  to 
insult,  the  while  he  could  not  yet  shatter  them,  the  false  gods  to 
whom  he  had  lovingly  burned  his  incense  ;  he  hurled  from  the 
pedestal  his  own  hands  had  raised,  all  those  brilliant  but  worth- 
less idols  whose  seductive  beauty  had  fascinated  his  youth  ;  he 
swore  to  tear  down  the  proud  temples  erected  for  these  deceitful 
modem  deities  who,. under  the  ill-gotten  names  of  liberty,  equality, 
fraternity,  keep  up  amidst  men  error,  discord,  and  the  sordid 
bondage  of  poverty.  Such  was,  for  its  most  illustrious  founders, 
the  starting-point  of  nihilism. 
^  Looked  at  in  this  light,  nihilism,  instead  of  being  a  produce 

of  the  West  and  European  contagion,  becomes  a  sort  of  protest  of 
Russia  against  Europe,  a  ' '  tragic  emancipation  of  the  Russian  con- 
sciousness." If  we  consider,  not  the  logical  sequence  and  the 
historical  filiation  of  ideas,  but  the  feelings  it  nourishes,  often 
unknowingly,  nihilism  turns  out  to  be,  like  Slavophilism,  a  sort 
of  violent  reaction  against  the  long  intellectual  domination  of 
Europe,  against  her  society,  her  science,  against  the  whole  modem 
world.  It  is  the  rebellion  of  a  child  indignant  at  having  been 
deceived  by  his  master  ;  and  the  more  confiding,  the  more  respect- 
fiil  his  docility  has  been,  the  more  bitter,  the  more  passionate 

will  the  rebellion  be. 

r — 

The  spectacle  of  Western  Europe's  incessant  and  barren  revo- 
/  lutions  was  not  calculated  to  lead  Russian  radicalism  back  to 
i  admiration  and  imitation  of  the  Occident.  After  having,  like 
Herzen,  eulogized  with  ingenious  enthusiasm  its  various  revolu- 
tionary experiences,  they  proclaimed,  like  Herzen  still,  that  it  was 
as  narrow  as  inconsistent,  as  incapable  of  progress  in  revolution 
as  in  conservatism.     This  Europe  towards  which  he  kept  turning 


HISTORY  AND    THE  ELEMENTS  OF  CIVILIZATION.      235 

his  eyes  and  his  heart's  desires,  as  the  Mussulman  towards  Mecca, 
he  despaired  of  it ;  he  proclaimed  it  decrepit  and  "  played  out "  ; 
he  turned  his  back  on  it,  and  sought  elsewhere,  on  a  younger  soil, 
the  site  for  his  New  Jerusalem,  for  the  humanitarian  earthly  para- 
dise, to  be  opened  by  revolutions.  By  an  abrupt  revulsion  quite 
in  accord  with  the  national  character,  always  prone  to  sudden 
changes  of  front,  Russian  radicalism  overthrew  its  own  position 
and  turned  its  own  theory  inside  out.  The  part  of  initiator  and 
rescuer,  lately  held  to  be  the  undoubted  privilege  of  the  West,  it 
suddenly  transferred  to  its  own  ignorant  and  belated  native  land. 
The  light  it  had  looked  for  from  abroad  and  from  Europe's  enlight- 
enment, it  took  to  expecting  from  out  of  the  darkness  at  home. 
In  losing  faith  in  the  West,  the  radical,  like  the  Slavophil,  went 
back  to  his  faith  in  Russia,  but  for  reasons  the  opposite  of  the 
Slavophil's.  In  this  native  land  of  his,  so  severely  scorned  by 
him,  he  all  at  once  discovered  a  secret  superiority,  bom  of  its 
very  inferiority. 

And  this  recoil  was  logical.  Modem  civilization,  modem 
society  once  condemned,  the  country  most  apt  for  future  creations 
is  that  where  the  past  leaves  the  most  widely  open  field  to  the 
present,  where  the  land  is  easiest  to  clear.  Now  in  this  respect 
Russia  manifestly  heads  the  list.  Of  all  civilized  states,  it  is  that 
where  the  institutions  and  the  arts  which  are  the  pride  and  joj^ 
of  the  modem  world  have  struck  their  roots  least  deeply  and  bear 
the  least  luscious  fruits  ;  where  it  is  easiest  to  destroy,  and  where 
destruction  would  be  effected  at  a  minimum  cost  to  imagination, 
heart,  reason,  prejudices.  The  Russians  are  the  veritable  chosen 
people  of  revolution,  because  they  are  the  people  that  has  least  to 
lose  by  it.  By  this  sort  of  rehabilitation  and  glorification  of  the 
land,  lauded  up  by  its  children  not  for  its  wealth,  real  or  fancied, 
but  for  its  barrenness  and  poverty,  the  revolutionary  spirit  has 
assumed  in  Russia  a  singular  vigor  and  confidence  ;  it  has,  so  to 
speak,  taken  a  national  and  patriotic  character,  through  its  very 
negation  of  nationality  and  love  of  country. 


236       THE  EMPIRE   OF   THE   TSARS  AND    THE  RUSSIANS. 

Thus,  even  apart  from  their  common  origin  from  German  phi- 
losophy and  Hegel,  Slavophilism  and  nihilism,  as  doctrines,  have 
had  the  same  points  to  depart  from  and  to  arrive  at.  Both  these 
' '  hostile  brothers ' '  departed  from  the  insufl&ciency  of  the  bour- 
geois civilization  and  the  disappointment  it  entailed ;  then,  after 
keeping  their  backs  turned  on  each  other  a  while,  they  unexpect- 
edly met  on  the  ground  of  the  glorification  and  apotheosis  of 
Russia,  to  whom  they  both  promise  a  sort  of  primacy,  leadership 
in  the  future,  though  they  all  find  to  praise  at  present  but  one  thing 
— ^the  7«zr,  or  the  collective  property  scheme  of  the  peasant  class. 

One  of  the  causes  of  the  waverings,  the  inconsistencies,  the 
worries  which  the  tsars  undergo  in  their  home  politics  in  this 
nineteenth  century  is  the  violence  with  which  they,  no  less  than 
their  subjects,  are  tugged  at  and  pulled  different  ways  by  the  two 
chief  tendencies  that  strive  together  for  the  direction  of  the  public 
spirit.  Under  Alexander  I.  the  influence  of  Western  Europe  and 
her  admirers  was  almost  constantly  predominant.  Under  Nicolas 
public  sympathy  veered  round  to  the  so-called  national  spirit. 
Under  Alexander  II.  the  government  yielded  to  each  current  by 
turns,  to  successive  but  opposite  impulses. 

^  Since  Alexander  III.  came  to  the  throne,  greeted  by  a  portion 
of  the  nation  as  a  sort  of  Messiah,  destined  to  restore  Russia  to  her 
own  real  self,  the  neo-Slavophil  or  national  tendencies  once  more 
came  to  the  fore,  both  at  court  and  in  the  government.  It  can  be 
predicted  without  much  risk  of  going  wrong,  that  Russia  will  pass 
through  many  more  such  oscillations,  driven  this  way  to-day  and 
that  to-morrow  by  the  contrary  winds  which  fight  for  the  control 
of  her.  That  alone  accounts  for  many  of  the  difl&culties  among 
which  she  flounders,  for  her  uncertainties,  her  reluctance  to  enter 
on  the  road  of  political  transformations.  As  long  as  she  cannot 
make  up  her  mind  and  choose  between  the  neo-Slavophils  and 
their  opponents,  Russia  will  drift  along  rudderless. 

Against  the  Slavophils  who  claim  for  their  country  a  culture  all 
its  own,  original,  capable  of  indefinite  development  as  soon  as  it 


HISTORY  AND   THE  ELEMENTS  OF  CIVILIZATION,      237 

will  be  rid  of  the  false  gods  of  the  foreigner,  the  "  Occidentals  " 
(Zdpadniki)  will  long  struggle, — they  who  will  not  allow  the 
Slavs  to  possess  the  elements  of  a  new  civilization,  and  are  bent 
on  carrying  on  the  tradition  inaugurated  by  Peter  the  Great. 
Between  the  two  hostile  camps  nihilism  stands  up,  grown  tall  in 
their  shade,  under  cover  of  their  wrangles, — nihilism  which  sports 
the  armor  of  both,  and,  taking  its  cue  from  the  negative  portions 
of  both  their  doctrines,  denies  Russia  with  one  breath  and  the  West 
with  the  next. 

Such  are  the  three  extreme  directions  between  which,  under 
various  names,  with  more  or  less  determined  opinions,  the  Russian 
mind  oscillates.  Some  assert  that  Russia  has  enough  stuff  in  her 
traditions  to  provide  for  herself ;  others  derive  from  imitation  of  the 
foreigner  all  the  ills  of  society  and  the  government.  Others  again, 
not  allowing  their  country  any  social  or  political  principle  of  its 
own,  look  on  it  as  on  a  belated  member  of  the  great  European 
family  and  see  no  chance  of  progress  for  it  except  along  the  lines 
opened  to  it  by  the  West.  Still  others  will  have  it  that,  in  the 
shapeless  survivals  of  the  past,  there  is  nothing  worth  preserving, 
and  call  for  the  destruction  of  all  that  now  exists,  so  as  to  clear 
the  ground  for  putting  up  a  building  constructed  after  no  known 
model  whatever,  either  native  or  foreign.  A  glance  down  Russian 
history  will  show  us  how  these  three  seemingly  incompatible  con- 
ceptions can  all  emerge  out  of  the  same  past,  and  in  what  measure 
each  may  consider  itself  justified  by  facts. 


APPENDIX  TO  BOOK  IV.,  CHAPTER  I.     (See  p.  226,  note  i.) 

ONCS  FOR.  AI,I« — ^WHAT  IS  RUSSIA'S  REI,ATlON  TO  RUROPB  ? 

This  question,  which  continually  turns  up  in  any  earnest  discussion  of 
Russia's  historical  position  and  the  future  that  must  spring  therefrom, 
being  as  difficult  to  settle  as  impossible  to  dismiss,  was  already  touched 
upon  by  Mr.  Leroy-Beaulieu  in  the  initial  chapter  of  this,  his  great  work. 
We  there  supplemented  his  remarks  with  some  pithy  lines  from  Mr.  Dani- 


238      THE  EMPIRE  OF  THE    TSARS  AND    THE  RUSSIANS. 

lefsky's  thoughtful  book,  Russia  and  Europe.  In  the  present  chapter  ova 
author  is  brought  back  to  this  master-question,  on  which  he  rests  with 
greater  insistence.  It  may  not  be  out  of  place  to  follow  his  lead  and  here 
present  our  readers,  as  briefly  as  possible,  with  the  sequel  of  Mr.  Danilef- 
sky's  argument — or,  more  correctly,  review  of  facts,  and  the  conclusions, 
they  force  on  him. 

Russia  is  not  Europe,  either  geographically  or  historically,  is  his  verdict 
(see  pp.  13,  14),  supported  by  a  breadth  and  wealth  of  illustration  at  which 
limited  space  does  not  allow  of  our  even  hinting  here,  and  concludes : 
"Having  no  part  either  in  the  European  good  or  the  European  evil,  how 
can  she  belong  to  Europe  ?  Neither  true  modesty  nor  true  pride  allow  her 
to  assume  that  she  does.  Only  low-bred  upstarts  posh  their  way  among 
their  betters.  .  .  .  But,  it  will  be  said,  if  Russia  does  not  belong  to 
Europe  by  right  of  birth,  she  does  by  right  of  adoption.  She  has  appro- 
priated to  herself  (or  should  strive  to  do  so)  all  that  Europe  has  worked  out ; 
,  she  takes  (or  at  least  should  take)  her  share  of  Europe's  labors,  Europe's 
'  -triumphs.  But  who  has  done  the  adopting  ?  We  don't,  somehow,  perceive 
much  of  Europe's  parental  feeling  in  her  relations  with  Russia.  But  there 
lies  not  the  point.  It  lies  in  this  :  is  such  adoption  a  possible  thing  any- 
how ?  Can  an  organism,  so  long  nourished  on  its  own  saps,  drawn  by  its 
own  roots  out  of  its  own  soil,  fasten  itself  by  suction  on  to  another  organ- 
ism, let  its  own  roots  dry  ofiF,  and,  out  of  a  self-dependent  plant,  become  a 
'  parasitical  one  ?  .  .  .  But,  for  the  sake  of  argument,  let  us  have  it  so  : 
Russia,  though  not  by  birth  European,  has  become  so  by  adoption.  Why 
then,  of  course,  our  motto  should  be :  Europcsus  sum  et  nihil  europcei  a 
me  alienum  esse  puto.  All  Europe's  interests  must  also  be  Rtissia's  interests, 
her  wishes  must  be  our  wishes,  her  aspirations — ours  ;  ilfaut  les  ipouser — we 
must  become  wedded  to  them — in  the  expressive  French  phrase.  We  may 
dififer  in  details  with  France  or  Italy,  England  or  Germany,  but  with  Europe 
as  a  whole,  i.  e.,  with  otu-selves,  we  cannot  possibly  difiFer  or  disagree  :  we 
must  be  conscientious,  consistent. 

"What  rdle  on  the  universal  stage  does  Europe  assign  us,  her  adopted 
children  ?  To  be  the  bearers  and  propagators  of  her  civilization  in  the  East 
— that  is  the  lofty  mission  allotted  to  us,  the  task  in  which  Europe  will  sym- 
pathize, which  she  will  advance  with  her  blessings,  her  best  wishes,  her  ap- 
plause, to  the  edification  and  delight  of  our  humanitarian  progressists.  Very 
well.  Eastward-ho  !  then.  But  stop — what  East  ?  We  had  thought  to  begin 
with  Turkey.  What  could  be  better  ?  There  live  our  brethren,  in  blood  and 
spirit, — live  in  agonies  and  yearn  for  deliverance.     '  Whither  away  ?    You 


HISTORY  AND    THE  ELEMENTS  OF  CIVILIZATION.      239 

kave  no  business  there,'  thunders  Europe;  'that  is  not  the  East  iox  you  ; 
there 's  more  Slavic  trash  there  than  I  like,  and  /'m  going  to  manage  them. 
My  Germans  have  done  such  work  before.  Clear  out  of  there.' — We 
tackled  the  Caucasus — that 's  a  sort  of  East  too.  Mamma  got  very  mad : 
'  Don't  dare  to  touch  the  noble  paladins  of  freedom  !  much  it  becomes  you 
to  meddle  with  them.  Hands  off ! ' — For  once,  thank  goodness,  we  did  not 
obey,  and  forgot  our  Europeanism.  There  is  Persia  now ;  something  might 
be  done  there  in  the  way  of  sowing  the  seeds  of  European  civilization.  The 
Germans  would  not  have  minded ;  their  Drang  nach  Osten  ('Eastward  Push '), 
scarcely  would  reach  so  far  ;  but  out  of  respect  to  England  we  had  to  be 
checked:  'Too  near  India.  Move  on!' — To  China,  perhaps? — 'Well, 
no.  Is  it  tea  you  need  ?  We  '11  bring  you  all  you  want  from  Canton.  China 
is  a  wealthy  country — we  can  teach  her  without  your  help.  She  is  smoking 
our  Indian  opium  like  a  charm — let  her  alone.' — But,  for  mercy's  sake, 
where  is  our  East,  the  East  which  it  is  our  sacred  mission  to  civilize  ? — 
'Central  Asia,  that's  the  place  for  you,  do  not  forget  it.  We  could  not 
get  there  anyhow,  besides  it  would  not  pay.  There  lies  your  sacred  histori- 
cal mission.  .  .  .' — So  then  we  shall  have  gone  through  a  thousand  years 
of  labor,  streaming  with  sweat  and  blood  ;  we  shall  have  built  up  an  empire 
of  a  hundred  million  souls  (of  which  sixty  millions  of  one  race  and  blood, 
a  thing  unequalled  in  the  world,  except  in  China), — all  to  tender  the  bless- 
ings of  Exiropean  civilization  to  five  or  six  millions  of  tatterdemalions,  the 
denizens  of  Kokan,  Khiva,  and  Bokhara,  with  two  or  three  millions  of  Mon- 
golian nomads  thrown  in — for  that  is  what  the  high-sounding  phrase  about 
bearing  European  civilization  into  the  heart  of  the  Asiatic  continent  really 
amounts  to, — an  enviable  lot  indeed,  and  a  mission  to  be  proud  of.  In  sooth, 
PaHuriunt  montes,  nasdtur  ridiculus  mus.  .  .  ."  Then  the  author 
depicts  in  glowing  colors  what  a  glorious  thing  it  would  have  been  foi  Eu- 
rope had  Russia  existed  only  as  an  empty  space,  with  no  tiresome  Russian 
and  other  Slavs  to  exercise  there  a  sort  of  right  of  pre-emption,  and  only 
savages  of  the  Red-Indian  type  to  be  summarily  dealt  with — what  a  fine  set 
of  United  States,  with  all  European  improvements,  would  have  grown  up 
there,  opening  out  to  Europe  a  gorgeous  "  Far-East,"  in  an  unending  golden 
perspective  !  Curious  enough,  the  identical  thought  came,  in  a  somewhat 
different  spirit,  to  Mr.  I^eroy-Beaulieu,  and,  our  sincere  friend  and  earnest 
well-wisher  as  he  is,  much  of  the  regret  which  the  Russian  writer  banter- 
ingly  supposes  and  expatiates  upon,  shows,  seriously,  between  his  lines. 
Even  he  cannot  help  grudging  us  Slavs,  the  Europeans  not  of  Europe,  a 
little,  and,  perhaps  unconsciously,  our  broad  place  in  the  sun  (see  p.  54). 


240      THE  EMPIRE   OF   THE   TSARS  AND    THE  RUSSIANS. 

What  wonder  then  if  Mr.  Danilefsky,  dropping  banter  for  the  graver  tone 
becoming  the  subject,  announces  this  result : 

"  Thus,  then,  after  conceding  that  Russia  is  European  by  adoption  if  not 
by  birth,  we  are  led  to  the  conclusion  that  she  is  not  merely  a  colossal 
superfluity,  a  huge  historical  pleonasm,  but  a  very  positive,  hard-to-be-over- 
come hindrance  to  the  evolution  and  propagation  of  the  alleged  only  uni- 
versal— in  reality  European,  i.  e.,  local  Teutono-Latin — civilization.  In  this 
light — and  in  this  light  only — Europe  regards  /Russia." 


BOOK  IV.     CHAPTER  II. 

The  First  Russia  and  Europe — Traits  of  Kinship — Similarities  and  Dissimi- 
larities— The  Varangians — Christianity  and  Byzantine  Training — ^The 
Principalities  and  Frequent  Shiftings  of  the  National  Centre — The  Great 
Unhingement  of  Russian  History. 

European  civilization  grew  upon  a  triple  foundation :  the 
Christian  element,  the  Graeco-Roman  or  classical  element,  the 
Teutonic  or  barbaric  element.*  All  the  Western  states  were 
erected,  so  to  speak,  with  identical  materials,  in  the  same  style,  on 
a  more  or  less  similar  plan.  The  three  great  bases  on  which  re- 
poses the  culture  of  the  West,  are  they  found  in  the  foundations 
of  Russia  ?  If  we  dig  deep  enough,  we  do  come  upon  them,  but 
they  have  neither  the  same  proportions  nor  the  same  importance 
as  in  the  other  countries. 

The  ancients  knew  of  Russia  only  the  shores  of  the  Euxine. 
The  Greeks  dropped  colonies  only  on  those  shores ;  the  Romans 
scarcely  held  a  nominal  sway  over  them.  With  the  former  those 
wide  plains  passed  for  the  home  of  the  Cimmerians'  eternal  night ; 
to  the  latter  the  regions  north  of  the  Danube  and  the  Black  Sea 
were  a  sort  of  Siberia,  whither  they  sent  state  criminals.  Russia 
was  too  compact,  too  continental  for  antique  civilization,  which, 
wending  its  way  along  shorelands,  could  gain  a  hold  only  on  essen- 
tially maritime  countries.  Germany  already  had  proved  too  solid 
a  mass  and  too  severe  a  clime  for  it ;  Russia  was  just  touched  by 
it  along  her  southern  beaches.     The  Greeks  had  had  some  preco- 

*  It  should  be  mentioned  that  the  following  pages  were  mostly  written 
before  Mr.  Alfr.  Rambaud's  admirable  History  of  Russia  came  out.     See 
Revue  des  Deux  Mondes,  January  15,  1874. 
16  241 


242       THE  EMPIRE   OF    THE    TSARS  AND    THE  RUSSIANS, 

cious  intercotirse  with  the  natives.  They  have  themselves  pre- 
served for  us  the  memory  of  the  Scythian — alias  the  Russian — 
Anacharsis,'  and  the  jewelry  discovered  in  the  graves  of  the  steppes 
shows  that  these  remote  wildernesses  were  not  closed  to  Hellenic 
art.  As  has  been  the  case  with  all  great  states  of  Europe,  some 
portions  of  Russia's  territory  have  been  under  Greek  or  Roman 
rule.  It  was  not,  however,  till  the  Middle  Ages  that  the  Rus- 
sians, through  Constantinople,  came,  though  remotely,  under  the 
influence  of  Greece  and  Rome  ;  and  the  channel  was  a  round- 
about and  corrupt  one.  Byzance,  at  the  time  of  her  decadence, 
was  the  only  Rome  they  knew,  the  Lower-Empire  was  the  only 
model  supplied  them  by  Greek  and  I^atin  civilization. 

Very  different  were  the  part  and  importance  of  the  barbaric 
element.  Like  the  states  of  Western  Europe,  the  Russian  state 
appears  to  have  been  founded  by  Teutons  amidst  a  people  that 
was  soon  after  to  be  won  to  Christianity.  This,  to  begin  with,  is 
a  patent  similarity  to  all  those  European  histories  which  all  seem 
to  be  the  repetition  of  one  and  the  same  occurrence.  Yet,  under 
the  similarity,  the  difference  already  shows.  Russia  was  a  different 
material,  though  of  kindred  substance — Slavic  material,  instead 
of  Celtic  or  Teutonic.  What  is  the  Slavs'  original  contribution 
to  civilization  ?  The  Russians  would  fain  base  on  them  their  cul- 
ture as  well  as  their  nationality.  History  unfortunately  knows 
little  about  them  at  the  time  of  their  separate  existence.     There 

'  This  young  prince  is  the  first-known  prototype  of  the  much-travelled, 
brilliant,  cosmospolite  Russian  of  our  day.  He,  too,  fell  down  and  wor- 
shipped "civilization,"  "progress,"  "liberalism,"  which  the  Athens  of  the 
Pisistratidse  and  of  Solon,  no  doubt,  embodied  in  a  form  no  less  entrancing 
than  the  Paris  of  to-day.  And  when  recalled  by  duty  to  his  "barbaric" 
realms,  the  poor  fellow  sweetened  his  exile  by  initiating  his  companions 
into  the  delights  of  Hellenic  culture  and  easy  social  manners.  But  there 
was  a  stem  elder  brother — the  Slavophil  of  the  time — ^who  made  it  his  mis- 
sion to  guard  his  people  from  the  pollution  and  dangers  of  foreign  innova- 
tions, and,  in  the  name  of  nationality,  put  an  end  to  all  attempts  at  reforms 
by  taking  the  would-be  reformer's  life.  Things  were  simple  in  those  days, 
and  if  the  end  was  admitted  to  be  desirable,  the  surest  and  shortest  means 
to  it  were  naturally  the  best. — See  Herodotus,  iv.,  76,  and  l/ucian,  Scytha. 


HISTORY  AND    THE  ELEMENTS  OF  CIVILIZATION.      243 

was  no  Tacitus  to  leave  us  a  Slavia  to  match  the  Germania  of 
Agricola's  son-in-law.  In  old-time  Sarmatia  we  find  the  Slavs  at 
their  earliest  known  stage  in  contact  with  Teutonic  or  Finnic 
' '  allogens. ' '  Since  some  time  before  Rurik,  the  Slavs  of  the  Dniepr 
and  the  Volkof  were  settlers  and  farmers  ;  already  they  lived  in 
solid  wooden  houses;  already  they  had  cities  or  "enclosures" 
that  served  for  shelter,  the  so-called  gorodish-tshi,^  thence 
grM  or  gdrod*  like  Kief  and  N6vgorod  ("new  enclosure," 
or  "  new  city  "),  the  very  names  of  which  presuppose  other  older 
ones.  The  different  tribes  lived  in  isolated  clans,  which  do  not 
seem  to  have  had  much  cohesion,  since,  to  shape  them  into  a  state 
or  nation,  foreign  alloy  was  needed.  Compared  to  the  Teutons, 
the  Russian  Slavs  appear  to  have  had  a  preference  for  association 
and  community  as  forms  of  social  life,  to  have  possessed  a  more 
peaceable  and  less  hierarchical  spirit,  a  more  outspoken  or  more 
persistent  leaning  towards  patriarchal  life,  or,  more  correctly,  tow- 
ards family  life  on  a  large  scale.  The  rod,  or  "  family,"  in  the 
sense  of  the  I^atin  gens,  seems  to  have  been  the  only  basis  of  their 
entire  social  organization.  These  tendencies,  so  blurred  and  in- 
distinct at  this  distance  of  time,  perhaps  contained  the  first  germ 
of  Russian  institutions. 

The  Teutonic  element,  which  in  all  Europe  has  played  a  part, 
rather  too  promptly  contested  just  at  present,  was  not  entirely 

'  The  peculiar  and  rather  vigorous  Slavic  double  sibilant  compounded 
of  the  sounds  sh  and  tch  is  so  puzzling  to  foreigners  that  the  only  way  to 
make  the  pronunciation  clear  to  them  is  to  separate  the  two  component 
sounds  by  a  hyphen,  which  at  once  shows  how  really  simple  and  easy  it  is. 
This  is  the  sound  which  the  Latin  alphabet  of  the  Poles  and  the  Tchekhs, 
inadequate  for  Slavic  phonetics,  renders  by  the  bewilderingly  bristling  com- 
bination, szcz,  the  conventional  sign  for  sh  (as  in  shy)  being  sz  and  that 
for  tch  or  ch  (as  in  church)  cz.  The  old  Slavic  alphabet  (adopted  by  the 
Orthodox  Slavs),  compiled  half  of  Latin,  half  of  Greek  characters,  has  signs 
specially  invented  for  this  and  a  few  other  peculiarly  Slavic  sounds.  But 
when  the  Western  Slavs  accepted  Latin  Christianity,  they  had  to  accept 
also  the  Latin  alphabet  of  the  Latin  prayer-books,  and  to  twist  and  force  it 
into  phonetic  uses  for  which  it  was  insufficient. 

*  Identical  with  Lithuanian  grod,  English  garden  and  yard,  German 
garten,  Latin  horius,  Greek  khortos. 


244      ^^^  EMPIRE  OF   THE   TSARS  AND    THE  RUSSIANS. 

missing  in  Russia.  It  was  most  probably  Norman  adventurers, 
like  the  Vikings  that  were  at  the  same  period  ravaging  the  West- 
em  countries  and  founding  there  their  various  dynasties,  who,  in 
the  ninth  century,  laid  the -grounding  of  the  state  out  of  which 
was  evolved  the  Russian  Empire.  The  Kief  chronicler,  Nestor, 
shows  us  Rurik  and  his  brothers  called  by  the  Slavs  of  N5vgorod, 
tired  of  their  intestine  squabbles.*  The  chronicler  of  the  eleventh 
century  may  already  have,  out  of  national  conceit,  disguised  a  Nor- 
man conquest  or  invasion  under  the  veil  of  a  voluntary  call  from  the 
Ndvgorod  Slavs.  In  our  days  a  new-fangled  historical  criticism 
and  retrospective  patriotism  have  attempted  to  wrest  from  the 
Scandinavians  Rurik  and  his  companions,  the  Varangians.  The 
Russians  have  looked  about  for  a  more  national  genealogy  to 
endow  the  founders  of  their  empire  with.  No  historical  question 
has  called  forth  more  passionate  discussions  among  the  scholars 
of  Moscow  and  Petersburgh.  They  have  applied  Niebuhr's 
proceedings  with  Roman  history  to  their  own  country  rather  late 
in  the  day.  One  scholar  holds  Rurik  and  the  Varangians  to  be 
exiled  N6vgorodians,  another — Slavs  from  the  southern  coast  of 
the  Baltic,  or  from  the  Isle  of  Riigen ;  another  takes  them  for 
Lithuanians  ;  others  still  for  bands  of  adventurers  of  mixed  races, 
Slavs  and  Scandinavians.  In  these  latter  days  some  have  gone 
so  far  as  to  make  of  this  most  essential  incident  a  myth  invented 
by  the  self-conceit  of  the  monks  of  the  twelfth  or  thirteenth  cen- 
tury, anxious  to  discover  an  illustrious  origin  for  their  nation  or 
their  princes,  after  the  fashion  of  the  French  chroniclers  who 
brought  down  the  Merovingians  from  Priam  of  Troy.f  In  spite 
of  the  latest  researches,  the  Varangians  will  have  to  be  left  to 

*  On  this  legendary  call  the  Slavophils  lately  constructed  a  whole  hi»- 
torical  system,  which  placed  the  Russian  state,  based  on  the  people's  vol- 
untary submission,  on  a  different  footing  from  the  Western  states,  all  based 
upon  conquest  This  position,  now  abandoned  in  history,  can  still  be  found 
in  the  economical  or  political  theories  of  many  a  Russian  writer. 

t  This  position,  very  ably  upheld  by  Ilovaisky,  has  been  refuted  by 
Solovidf,  one  of  Russia's  most  eminent  historians. 


HISTORY  AND    THE  ELEMENTS  OF  CIVILIZATION.      245 

Scandinavia.  This  filiation  accords  better  with  the  Byzantine 
annalists  and  with  Nestor  as  well.*  The  names  of  Rurik  and  his 
comrades  betray  their  Teutonic  stock  ;  the  character  of  the  leaders' 
authorit3%  their  method  of  parcelling  out  occupied  lands,  and  even 
to  their  manner  of  warfare  confirm  this  origin.  They  were  Nor- 
mans, seeking  for  a  road  to  Constantinople,  and  who,  having 
gained  possession  of  N6vgorod  and  Kief,  founded  a  military  and 
trading  state  between  the  Baltic  and  the  Black  Sea,  along  the 
Dniepr,  then  one  of  the  great  commercial  thoroughfares  of  the 
East.  Like  their  brethren  in  the  West,  these  Russian  Northmen 
were,  as  Gibbon  observes,  more  formidable  by  water  than  by  land  ; 
on  their  small  barges  they  went  down  and  attacked  Constantinople, 
and  imposed  on  it  tributes  or  commercial  treaties,  of  which  the 
chronicles  have  preserved  the  very  practical  clauses.* 

The  first  Russian  law-book,  Riisskaya  Prdvda — the  Russian 
Right — still  bears  the  Teutonic  impress.  In  this  code,  put 
into  shape  by  Yarosl^v,  over  a  century  and  a  half  after  Rurik, 
some  have  fancied  they  could  trace  more  than  one  custom  of  Nor- 
mandy. Like  the  Western  nations,  the  Russians  then  had  the 
ordeal  and  the  judicial  duel ;  like  them,  they  admitted,  for  murder 
and  other  crimes,  compounding  in  a  sum  of  money  ;  the  very  name 
of  this  fine,  vira^  answers  to  the  German  Wehrgeld.  Between 
this  first  Russian  and  the  European  states  founded  by  Teutonic 
tribes,  numerous  similarities  can  be  adduced.  The  difl&culty  Ues 
in  discriminating  what  belongs  to  the  Varangians  and  to  the  Scan- 
dinavian influence  and  what  should  be  credited  to  the  Slavs.     In 

•♦  See  appendix  to  this  chapter. 

*  The  Western  scholars,  especially  those  of  Scandinavia,  stand  up  for  the 
old  tradition  which,  to  use  a  Russian  writer's  expression, stands  firmly  based 
on  two  hitherto  unshaken  pillars  :  the  names  of  the  first  Russian  princes, 
and  the  names  of  the  falls  of  the  Dniepr.  (See,  for  example  the  learned 
researches  of  the  Rev.  Fath.  Martynof,  in  the  Revue  des  Questions  Histo- 
rigues,  July,  1875,  and  the  Polybiblion,  May,  1875.)  W.  Thomson,  Profes- 
sor at  Copenhagen,  has  given  three  lectures  on  this  subject.  They  were 
translated  into  German  under  the  title,  Ursprung  des  Russischen  States 
{Origin  of  the  Russian  State),  1879. 


246      THE  EMPIRE   OF   THE    TSARS  AND    THE  RUSSIANS. 

Russia  even  more  than  in  the  West,  we  run  the  risk  of  ascribing 
to  the  Teutons  what  the  Barbarians  can  lay  claim  to,  of  attributing 
to  race  the  effects  of  culture.  Slavs  or  Teutons,  no  matter  which, 
all  these  tribes  had  similarities  of  customs  and  character  which 
render  it  no  easy  task  to  make  out  in  the  institutions  the  part  of 
each. 

The  Teutonic  impress,  having  gone  less  deep,  was  also  less 
enduring  in  Russia  than  in  the  West.  The  absorption  of  the 
Scandinavian  top-layer  by  the  Slavic  subsoil  was  rapid  and  com- 
plete. No  matter  how  many  recruits  from  Scandinavia  the  Va- 
rangian princes  kept  calling  in  during  more  than  a  century,  their 
settling  in  Russia  is  rather  to  be  compared  to  that  of  the  Normans 
in  Neustria  than  that  of  the  Merovingians  and  the  Carlovingians 
in  Gaul.  Rurik's  grandson,  Sviatosl^v,  already  bears  a  Slavic 
name  and  worships  Slavic  gods.* 

In  Russia,  as  everywhere  else,  it  was  a  woman  who  opened 
the  way  to  Christianity.  Olga,  the  Russian  Clotilda,  was  bap- 
tized in  Constantinople.  Her  example,  scorned  by  her  son 
Sviatosl^v,  was  followed  by  her  grandson  Vladimir,  who  was 
Russia's  Clovis  and  Charlemagne  in  one.  No  nation  ever  ac- 
cepted Christianity  more  easily  ;  it  had  been  prepared  for  it  all 
through  the  last  century  by  its  relations  with  Byzance,  and  Chris- 
tianity itself  had  been  prepared  for  the  Russian  people  by  the 
translation  of  the  Gospels  and  of  the  liturgy  into  Slavic.  By 
ushering  his  subjects  into  Christianity,  Vladimir  at  the  same 
time  introduced  them  amongst  the  European  nations.  Although 
Christ's  creed  has  been  to  our  civilization  much  more  a  nurse 
than  a  mother,  still  this  civilization  never  could  become  natural- 
ized in  any  nation  but  such  of  which  the  majority  were  Christian. 
Even  at  this  present  day,  when  it  seems  most  free  of  its  infancy's 
swaddling-clothes,  it  is  doubtful  whether  it  could  become  entirely 
acclimated  among  people  professing  alien  religions.     No  country 

*  On  the  drujina  of  the  kniazes,  as  on  the  boydrs  of  the  next  following 
epoch,  see,  further  on.  Book  VI.,  Chap.  II,   TTie  Nobility. 


HISTORY  AND    THE  ELEMENTS  OF  CIVILIZATION.      247 

yet  has  entered  into  civilization  by  another  gate  than  that  of 
Christianity.*  In  Vladimir's  time  more  particularly  the  Christian 
faith  drew  the  moral  boundary  line  of  Europe.  This  boundary 
was  crossed  by  Russia  as  early  as  the  tenth  century ;  but  the 
Gospel  was  not  to  clear  a  place  for  her  in  the  family  into  which  it 
had  just  introduced  her.  Here,  again,  through  the  resemblance 
of  Russia  to  the  West,  shows  an  essential  dissimilarity.  The  Cross 
comes  to  her  by  another  road — from  Byzance,  not  from  Rome,  and 
thus  the  very  bond  which  appeared  to  link  her  to  Europe,  in 
reality,  was  to  hold  them  apart. 

To  gain  a  knowledge  of  the  elements  of  Russian  civilization,  it 
were  needful  to  appraise  this  oriental  form  of  Christianity,  to  de- 
termine its  value  as  a  civilizing  agent.  Unfortunately  this  is  too 
lofty  a  question  to  be  lightly  touched  upon  in  passing  ;  it  will 
have  to  be  reserved  for  our  study  of  the  Russian  Church,  t  I^t  it 
suffice  here  to  remark  that,  if  less  favorable  to  the  progress  of  its 
proselytes,  the  Greek  creed  need  not,  therefore,  be  inferior  to  the 
Latin.  By  sequestering  Russia  from  the  West,  the  Eastern 
Church  took  from  her  one  of  the  principal  advantages  of  her  con- 
version ;  she  robbed  her  of  the  benefit  conferred  by  membership 
in  that  vast  intellectual  community  of  which  Rome  was  the  cen- 
tre, and  which,  for  the  West,  was  one  of  the  most  favorable  condi- 
tions of  civilization.  Russia  remained,  as  though  excommuni- 
cated, outside  the  pale  of  the  Christian  republic  ;  morally  as  well 
as  physically,  she  was  banished  to  the  frontiers  of  Europe. 

Christianity,  through  Constantinople,  brought  Russia  into  some 
sort  of  connection  with  antiquity.  Under  the  "  Grand-Kniazes  " 
of  Kief,  she  became  a  sort  of  colony  of  Byzance.  That  is  what 
one  of  her  writers  calls  by  the  name  of  ' '  the  first  of  her  intellec- 
tual bondages."      The  Russian  Metropolitans  were  Greeks,  the 

*  This  precisely  is  one  of  the  things  that  lend  so  fascinating  an  interest 
to  the  grand  experiment  that  is  being  tried  in  Japan. 

f  The  third  volume  of  the  present  work  will  be  devoted  to  the  Russian 
Church  and  sects.  It  will  there  appear  in  what  measure  heathen  ideas  and 
practices  have  at  times  persisted  under  Christian  rites. 


248      THE  EMPIRE   OF   THE    TSARS  AND    THE  RUSSIANS. 

"grand  princes"  took  pleasure  in  marrying  Greek  princesses 
and  visiting  the  Bosporus.  The  numerous  schools  endowed  by 
Vladfmir  and  Yarosl^v  were  founded  by  Greeks,  after  Byzantine 
models.  For  over  two  centuries,  Constantinople  and  her  daughter 
entertained  a  close  intercourse,  by  means  of  commerce,  religfion, 
arts,  etc.  Byzance  impressed  on  the  Russians'  manners,  character, 
taste,  a  stamp  which  was  not  quite  obliterated  by  the  Tatar 
impression  which  came  on  top  of  it. 

The  first  social  tjrpe  which  civilization  held  out  to  the  young 
Russian  Empire  was  the  autocracy  of  the  I,ower  Empire,  a  state 
without  political  rights,  ruled  by  Imperial  Omnipotence,  aided  by 
a  close  hierarchy  of  functionaries  and  employes. 

This  Byzantine  training  was  corrected  by  Kiefs  relations  with 
the  other  European  states.  The  isolation  to  which  geography, 
religion,  and,  later  on,  the  Mongol  yoke  condemned  Russia,  was 
not  as  severe  then  as  it  soon  became.  The  schism  between 
the  two  churches,  undecided  as  yet,  had  not  brought  about  the 
hostility  in  which  the  crusades  resulted.  It  had  not  yet  vetoed 
unions  between  worshippers  of  the  two  rites.  The  Russia  of  the 
eleventh  century  was  part  of  the  political  system  of  Europe. 
Yarosl^v,  Vladimir's  son  and  continuator,  was  connected,  through 
his  children,  with  the  King  of  France,  Henry  I.,  as  well  as  with 
the  Eastern  emperors,  the  rulers  of  Poland,  Norway,  Hungary, 
with  German  princes  and  with  the  Saxon  Harold,  the  hapless 
rival  of  William  the  Conqueror.  At  the  time  of  Kief's  suprem- 
acy Russia  was  more  European  than  at  any  other  time  before  the 
eighteenth  century.  Her  relations  with  Constantinople,  the  last 
refuge  of  the  arts  and  sciences  of  antiquity,  gave  her  an  easily 
gotten  advantage  over  the  West.  Kief,  beautified  by  Greek 
builders  and  limners,  came  to  be,  as  one  would  say,  a  reduced 
copy  of  Byzance,  a  Ravenna  of  the  north.  The  superb  mosaics 
of  her  grand  Cathedral  of  St.  Sophia,  the  magnificent  insig^a 
now  to  be  seen  in  the  treasury  at  Moscow,  bear  witness  even  yet 
to  the  wealth  of  this  capital,  the  wonder  of  chroniclers — German, 


HISTORY  AND    THE  ELEMENTS  OF  CIVILIZATION.      249 

Greek,  and  Arab.  The  Russian  state  was  already  then  the  vastest 
of  Europe,  one  of  the  most  active  in  trade  and  by  no  means  the 
least  cultivated.  In  the  eleventh  or  twelfth  century  it  could  seem 
more  favored  than  Northern  Germany,  which  at  that  time  still 
was  in  great  part  under  Slavic  or  I^ithuanian  rule,  sunk  in  heathen- 
ism and  barbarism.  It  was  an  empire  firmly  seated  on  European 
foundations,  yet  possessed  of  elements  of  originality  already  clearly 
marked  ;  a  country  which  in  the  midst  of  Christendom  appeared 
called  to  some  special  mission,  that  of  serving  as  a  link  between 
the  Greek  Orient  and  the  I^atin  Occident.  But  history  denied  to 
it  the  simple  boon  of  a  normal  development.  On  the  threshold 
of  youth  its  growth  was  stopped  by  one  of  the  greatest  perturba- 
tions recorded  in  human  annals.  The  Mongol  invasion  was  not 
merely  to  put  back  the  hand  of  Russia's  timepiece  three  hundred 
years,  it  was  to  turn  her  from  the  European  road  on  which  she 
was  travelling,  bend  her  to  alien  manners,  and,  in  a  measure, 
twist  her  out  of  shape.  It  was  in  the  early  years  of  the  thirteenth 
century,  at  the  very  dawn  of  Western  civilization,  when  mediaeval 
Europe  was  on  the  point  of  blossoming  out  on  all  sides — in  poetry, 
in  architecture,  in  scholasticism, — that  the  hordes  of  Djinghiz- 
Khan  cut  away  from  Europe  Russia's  co-operation.* 

Long  before  the  Mongol  invasion  the  development  of  the  first 
Russian  Empire  had  been  hampered  by  an  internal  evil,  the  division 
of  sovereignty.     All  the  descendants  of  Rurik  were  entitled  to 

*  But  what  a  compensating  boon  to  have  escaped  such  influences  as 
those  of  Innocent  III.  and  the  Albigensian  wars  !  Terrorizing  Christianity 
is  uncongenial  to  Russian  nature,  and  would  have  warped  it,  ruined  it  irre- 
trievably. Not  even  the  divine  trio,  Dante,  Giotto,  and  sweet  Francis  of 
Assisi,  could  have  made  up  for  the  moral  havoc  that  would  have  been 
wrought  by  these  two  things  alone — the  blasphemous  Albigensian  "  crusade  " 
and  the  Inquisition.  Catholicism,  being  hostile  to  the  Slavic  nature,  must 
have  destroyed,  defaced,  perverted — {dinaturS) — what  is  best  in  it.  See 
what  became  of  Poland  in  the  hands  of  Rome  !  Thus  the  Mongolian 
visitation  was  really  an  escape.  How,  in  other  ways  it  brought  out  and 
strengthened  the  best  in  the  nation,  we  shall  see  farther  on.  Another 
escape — no  scholasticism.  Better  a  thousand  times  the  naive  poetry  of  pop- 
ular beliefs. 


250      THE  EMPIRE   OF   THE    TSARS  AND    THE  RUSSIANS. 

some  share  in  the  common  inheritance,  or  rather  the  common 
property.  The  eldest,  the  head  of  the  house,  the  ' '  Grand-Kniaz, ' ' 
residing  in  Kief,  had  over  the  others  a  merely  nominal  supremacy. 
In  the  course  of  two  or  three  generations  this  system  of  absolute 
equality  of  rights  had  brought  about  a  parcelling  out  of  the  country 
nearly  amounting  to  trituration.  This  Russian  system  of  appa- 
nages was  not  the  feudal  system  of  the  West ;  it  diflFered  from 
that  in  many  particulars,  and  instead  of  favoring  the  introduction 
thereof,  rather  hindered  it.  Notwithstanding  all  these  successive 
di\dsions  and  subdivisions,  the  sovereignty,  like  the  nation,  re- 
mained one  and  indivisible,  or,  at  least,  was  regarded  as  such. 
The  kniazes,  who  divided  it  among  themselves,  held  only  a  life 
interest  in  it,  very  much  as  to  this  day  in  the  rural  communes 
each  member  of  the  mir  has  only  the  temporary  use  of  his  lot,  the 
land  itself  remaining  the  property  of  the  community.* 

As  though  to  make  this  resemblance  more  complete,  the  appa- 
naged  princes  frequently  passed  from  one  appanage  to  another. 
The  national  unity  was  maintained  by,  or,  more  correctly,  was 
vested  in,  the  unity  of  the  reigning  family,  the  claims  of  the  kniazes 
to  one  another's  inheritance  and  to  the  title  of  "Grand-Kniaz." 
Russia  formed  a  sort  of  patriarchal  federation  composed  of  princes 
of  one  and  the  same  blood,  having  at  their  head  their  "senior," 
or,  rather,  the  oldest  of  the  line.  From  such  a  constitution  or 
custom  naturally  sprang  civil  wars,  which  mutually  enfeebled 
the  princes.  This  and  their  frequent  transfer  from  one  appanage 
to  another  enabled  a  few  cities,  as,  for  instance,  Nbvgorod,  to 
preserve  their  liberty  and  to  rise  to  a  high  pinnacle  of  power,  t 

*  See,  further  on,  the  chapters  on  collective  property  and  the  village  com- 
munities. The  Russian  word  for  the  princely  appanages,  udiil,  signifies 
"  portion,"  "share,"  "  lot "  ;  it  has  the  same  radical  and  nearly  the  same 
meaning  as  the  word  nadiil,  designating  the  lot  of  each  peasant  in  the  com- 
munal land. 

t  The  appanage  system  has  given  rise  to  many  discussions  and  various 
hypotheses,  an  epitome  of  which  will  be  found  in  Mr.  Ralston's  excellent 
volume.  Early  Russian  History,  pp.  192,  193. 


HISTORY  AND    THE  ELEMENTS  OF  CIVILIZATION.      25 1 

The  period  which  these  competitions  made  one  of  misery 
was  still  not  barren  of  good.  In  the  midst  of  these  dissensions, 
possibly  thanks  to  them,  Russia  was  accomplishing  the  great 
work  set  her  by  destiny  :  the  colonization  of  the  vast  regions 
now  known  under  the  name  of  "  Great- Russia, " — a  colonization 
entirely  continental  and,  as  a  rule,  peaceable,  which  lasted 
through  centuries,  and  is  going  on  still,  and  which,  with  regard 
to  results,  is  no  whit  behind  the  maritime  colonization  of  the 
Western  nations.  The  Slavs  of  the  Dniepr  or  V6lkof,  turning  their 
backs  on  Europe,  marched  eastward  into  the  wilderness,  looking 
out  for  new  lands.  Ambition  or  religious  zeal  urged  each  kniaz 
to  extend  his  dominions  and  to  found  new  cities  to  endow  his 
children  with.  The  peoples  of  Turkish  race,  who  called  the 
steppes  of  the  south  their  own,  headed  the  new-comers  oflf  towards 
the  centre  and  the  north,  the  wooded  region,  which,  owing  to  the 
nomads,  was  for  a  long  time  the  only  one  fit  for  settled  life. 
Between  the  Slav  immigrants  and  the  Finn  aborigines  Christian- 
ity served  as  link  ;  it  became  the  cement  of  a  new  people. 

To  judge  by  the  very  vague  memory  which  the  Great-Russian 
retains  of  the  old  Slavic  gods,  compared  to  his  brethren  of  Little- 
Russia  and  White-Russia,  this  colonization  proceeded  on  a  large 
scale  only  after  the  conversion  of  the  Russians  to  Christianity, — a 
conversion  so  rapid,  so  easy,  that  in  a  short  hundred  years  these 
central  colonies  rivalled  the  cities  of  the  West,  and  tended  to 
become  the  centre  of  the  empire.  In  the  middle  of  the  twelfth 
century,  a  kniaz  of  Vladimir  on  the  Kliazma  took,  without 
changing  his  capital,  the  title  of  "Grand-Kniaz,"  exclusively 
reserved,  so  far,  to  the  prince  ruling  at  Kief.  A  little  later  the 
holy  city  on  the  Dniepr  was  captured  and  sacked  by  Russian 
hands.  In  these  strifes  between  prince  and  prince  there  was, 
however,  no  strife  of  race,  no  national  scission  between  the  new 
Russians  of  Suzdal  and  the  original  Russ,  as  those  have  since  pre- 
tended who  would  fain  make  two  different  nations  of  the  Great- 
and  the  lyittle-Russians.     If  this  war  between  Stizdal  and  Kief 


252       THE  EMPIRE   OF   THE    TSARS  AND    THE  RUSSIANS. 

had  any  historical  sense,  it  was  as  the  first  collision  between  the 
patrimonial  rigime  of  the  north  and  the  patriarchal  anarchy  of  the 
south,  as  the  first  triumph  of  the  autocracy  just  sprouting  amidst 
the  forests  of  the  east  over  the  family  traditions  of  the  kniazes  and 
the  traditions  of  independence  boasted  by  the  cities  or  tribes 
of  the  west. 

On  the  banks  of  the  Volga,  the  Klikzma,  the  Moskv^,  the 
mutual  relations  between  Rurik's  heirs  had  been  but  little  modi- 
fied. In  the  feeble  cities  founded  by  the  kniazes  in  the  midst  of 
countries  either  desert  or  inhabited  by  heathen  natives,  there 
were  few  or  no  popular  assemblies  or  viitchis,^  to  limit  the  author- 
ity of  the  kniaz.  In  these  remote  regions  the  prince  clings  to  the 
soil  conquered  or  colonized  by  him ;  he  settles  down  in  a  fixed 
residence,  instead  of  passing  fi-om  one  appanage  to  another.  To 
the  imdivided  sovereignty  vested  in  Rurik's  house  is  substituted 
the  patrimonial  hereditary  rigime,  which,  by  inheritance  or  con- 
quest, is  one  day  to  unite  the  entire  nation  under  one  single  rule. 

From  the  fertile  banks  of  the  semi-classical  Borysthenes,  the 
centre  of  Russia  had  been  shifted  to  a  land  farther  removed  from 
Europe,  and  diflfering  more  widely  from  it,  to  a  poorer  soil  and  a 
severer  clime,  to  a  people  more  mixed,  more  foreign  to  all  Teu- 
tonic or  Byzantine  influence.  The  Western  customs,  which  in  the 
Russia  on  the  Dniepr  had  but  feeble  roots,  were  not  given  time  to 
strike  any  at  all  in  this  ungracious  soil.  There  we  find  still  fewer 
European  elements,  fewer  political  rights  for  the  individual,  for 
corporations  or  cities.  A  country  almost  entirely  rural,  where  the 
base  and  type  of  social  order  is  the  "  house  and  yard,"  the  dvor, 
with  the  head  of  the  family  at  the  top.  Already  so  distant  from 
Europe,  this  nation  was  to  be  removed  still  farther  away  by  two 
centuries  of  the  domination  of  tribes  the  most  impermeable  to  the 
manners,  religion,  civilization  of  Europe. 

*  Viitchi  (from  viish-tch&ti,  "  to  speak,  to  discourse — "  cfr  '*  parliament  •' 
from  parler) — the  public  popular  assembly,  long  retained  in  Ndvgorod  and 
Pskof,  -while  in  Rostdf  and  the  cities  of  the  province  of  Sdzdal,  Moscovia 
that  was  to  be,  the  viitchi  was  early  suppressed  or  shorn  of  all  power. 


HISTORY  AND    THE  ELEMENTS  OF  CIVILIZATION.      253 
APPENDIX  TO  BOOK  IV.,  CHAPTER  II.     (See  p.  245,  note  4.) 

Mr.  Beaulieu  dismisses  this  question  far  too  summarily  and  with  less 
of  his  habitual  conscientious  deliberation  than  might  be  expected  when 
treating  a  subject  of  such  vast  import  and  capital  bearing  on  a  host  of  Rus- 
sian issues,  one  moreover  that  so  nearly  touches  the  very  core  of  the 
nation's  patriotic  sensitiveness.  He  passes  sentence  on  it  from  evidence 
taken  for  granted  at  second  hand ;  there  is  no  trace  of  personal  investiga- 
tion in  these  pages,  and  they  are,  accordingly,  not  up  to  date.  Mr.  Zabi^lin, 
in  the  second  chapter  of  his  sterling  work,  A  History  of  Russian  Life 
(1876),  gives  an  exhaustive  history  of  the  momentous  question  of  the  racial 
identity  of  the  Varangians,  as  presented  by  both  sides.  It  is  most  instruc- 
tive and,  if  not  absolutely  conclusive,  leaves  the  onus  probandi  very  much 
to  the  German  party — abroad  and  at  home, — who  had  settled  the  matter 
for  us  after  the  most  ponderous  scientific  methods,  never  dreaming  of  an 
appeal  to  a  later  tribunal,  with  added  materials  and  new  lights  for  the 
revision  of  the  old.  The  merest  epitome  of  these  most  interesting  two 
hundred  pages  is  far  beyond  the  limits  of  even  the  most  liberal  appendix, 
though  it  would  yield  the  substance  of  a  fascinating  magazine  article,  and 
we  must  be  content  with  emphasizing  the  following  facts  :  that  the  entire 
southern  littoral  of  the  Baltic,  as  well  as  several  islands  of  the  same,  are 
irrefragably  proved  to  have  been  thickly  peopled  with  Slavs  and,  in  some 
parts,  wholly  occupied  by  them  ;  that  the  Isle  of  Riigen  was  one  of  their 
chief  centres,  emporiums,  gathering-points,  for,  like  their  Scandinavian 
brethren  and  neighbors,  the  Northmen  of  various  tribes,  they  were  profes- 
sional pirates,  as  indicated  by  the  designation  of  Varihgy,  Vagre,  Vargy 
— all  more  or  less  incorrect  phonetic  approximations  of,  not  a  proper,  but  a 
common  Scandinavian  noun,  vargr,  meaning  "wolf,  fugitive,  robber," 
etc.,  and  still  surviving  in  the  modern  vagrant — which  they  by  no  means 
exclusively  owned,  but  shared  with  the  other  Northmen ;  that  the  partic- 
ularly warlike  and  powerful  tribe  of  Slavic  Varangians  or  Vagrians  with 
which  we  are  concerned,  sailors  as  fearless,  robbers  as  fierce  as  their 
southern  brethren  of  the  Adriatic,  were  next-door  neighbors  to  the  Anglo- 
Saxons  from  before  their  wholesale  invasion  of  Britain,  occupied  the 
sheltered  and  convenient  comerland  by  the  sea  and  the  mouth  of  the  Elbe, 
which  to  this  day  teems  with  Slavic  names  of  places,  some  only  slightly 
germanized,  like  Liibeck  =  Liiibitch,  Wismar  =  Vsetnir,  or  translated,  like 
Oldenburg  or  Aldenburg  from  the  Slavic  StargrM.  That  these  things 
and  many  others  to  the  point  were  really  so  is  amply  established  by  the 


254       THE   EMPIRE   OF    THE    TSARS  AND    THE   RUSSIANS. 

testimony  of  mediaeval  North  German  chroniclers,  naturally  hostile  to  the 
Slavs,  bat  simple  and  honest  in  their  work.  Helmold  (twelfth  century) 
writes  expressly  :  "  The  city  of  Aldenburg,  the  same  which  in  Slavic  bears 
the  name  of  Starygrdd,  i.  e.,  '  the  Old  City,'  lies  in  the  land  of  the  Vag- 
rians,  on  the  western  shore  of  the  Baltic  Sea,  and  on  the  furthest  confines 
of  Slavia.  This  city  and  all  the  Vagrian  land  were,  from  of  old,  inhabited 
by  very  brave  men,  because,  standing  in  the  front  of  all  the  Slavic  peoples 
and  bordering  on  the  Danes  and  Saxons,  they  always  were  first  and  leaders 
in  the  warlike  expeditions  against  their  neighbors  and  bore  the  brunt  of 
their  blows."  Helmold  mentions  having  been  told  that  the  Varangians 
"at  one  time  ruled  many  very  distant  Slavic  peoples^  These  Slavic 
Northmen  differed  from  their  Scandinavian  rivals  chiefly  in  this  ;  that, 
famous  as  they  were  for  their  "excessive  prowess  by  land  and  sea,"  they 
were  not  content  with  the  precarious  gains  of  a  piratical  existence,  but  early 
turned  their  attention  to  the  arts  of  peace,  especially  agriculture  and  com- 
merce, until,  in  the  words  of  eye-witnesses,  this  northern  part  of  modem 
Germany  became  "  like  unto  a  promised  land,  full  to  overflowing  with  all 
good  things,  unless  it  were  grapes,  figs,  and  dates."  Adam,  the  venerable 
canon  of  Bremen,  who  wrote  a  most  valuable  geographical  work  in  the 
eleventh  century,  waxes  enthusiastic  as  he  describes  the  glories  of  the  Slavic 
cities  of  Pomerania  {Potndriyi),  while  Jomandes,  the  Gothic  monk-chron- 
icler and  secretary  of  the  Gothic  kings  in  Italy,  as  early  as  the  sixth 
century  mentions  the  brisk  trade  in  furs  between  the  Baltic  Slavs  and  the 
"Roman  South,"  and  remarks  that  their  name  was  made  famous  by  the 
extraordinary  beauty  and  natural  black  color  of  the  sables  which  they 
brought  to  the  Italian  markets. 

As  for  Nestor,  the  Russian  monk-chronicler  of  the  twelfth  century, 
first  and  only  native  authority  concerning  the  beginnings  of  Russian^state 
life,  and  who  might  be  less  misleading  were  he  not  unfortunately  rather 
deeply  versed  in  the  confused  and  misty  erudition  of  the  age, — his  hand,  in 
an  evil  hour,  while  telling  the  famous  story  of  the  delegation  sent  from 
Novgorod  to  invite  the  Varangian  princes  over  to  rule  a  "  vast  and  rich, 
but  ill-ordered  land,"  penned  the  following  luckless  sentence  :  "  They  went 
beyond  the  sea,  to  the  land  of  the  Varangian  Russ.  These  Varangians 
called  themselves  Russ;  just  as  some  were  named  Swedes,  others  North- 
men, Angles,  others  again  Goths,  so  these  ones  are  named  Russ."  This 
sentence  of  Nestor's  is  brought  forth  as  the  strongest  possible  proof  that 
they  were  undoubtedly  Scandinavian.  Why?  "On  the  strength,"  says 
Mr.  Zabi^lin,  "  of  the  following  logical  argument :     If  in  a  room  there  are 


HISTORY  AND    THE  ELEMENTS  OF  CIVILIZATION.      255 

five  inmates,  of  whom  four  are  Germans,  the  fifth  must  of  necessity  be  a 
German  also;  indeed  the  word  'inmate'  itself  must  mean  'a  German.' 
Swedes,  Norwegians,  Danes,  Englishmen,  are  called  Europeans.  It  is  well 
known  that  these  peoples  are  German.  Consequently,  the  Russians,  who 
also  call  themselves  Europeans,  must  be  Germans  too." 

Strange  that  such  a  fallacy  should  have  been  accepted  by  numbers  of 
respectable  scientists  for  sound,  conclusive  reasoning  !  Sad  efiects  of  parti- 
sanship in  science  ! 

It  is  hard  to  have  to  abstain  from  developing  in  its  principal  phases  and 
following  out  to  its  conclusions  this  most  interesting  theme.  But  it  would 
seem  as  though  a  little  reflection  must  show  which  way  lie  the  probabilities, 
the  natural  and  easy  solution  of  many  problems  of  national  history  and  life 
which,  under  the  other  hypothesis,  have  always  remained  puzzles  that 
vainly  exercised  the  ingenuity  of  its  own  propounders. 

(Besides  Mr.  Zabi^lin's  History  of  Russian  Life,  consult  Alexander 
Hilferding's  classical  History  of  the  Baltic  Slavs,  a  very  valuable  work 
bearing  the  same  title  by  Kotliarefsky,  and  the  works  of  the  Tchekh 
historian  Schafdrik.) 


BOOK  IV.     CHAPTER  III. 


The  Tatar  Domination,  its  Effects  on  the  National  Manners  and  Character 
— On  the  Reigning  Family  and  Political  Status — Causes  and  Character 
of  the  Moscovite  Autocracy — In  what  the  Russia  of  the  Seventeenth 
Century  Differed  from  the  West  of  the  same  Period — Gaps  in  Russian 
History. 

The  invasion  of  the  Mongols,  in  the  beginning  of  the  thirteenth 
century,  snapped  the  thread  of  Russia's  destinies.  The  conse- 
quences of  this  terrible  event  were  peculiar  to  Russia  ;  the  causes 
were  not.  This  catastrophe,  seemingly  isolated,  was  only  an 
incident  in  the  great  struggle  between  Europe  and  Asia,  of  which 
the  crusades  were  the  chief  incident.  In  this  collision  of  two 
worlds  the  same  causes  were  at  work  from  the  Russian  steppes  to 
the  Spanish  sierras.  Russia  defended  the  left  wing  of  Christen- 
dom against  the  immense  converging  host  which  advanced  from 
Asia  and  Africa,  in  the  shape  of  a  gigantic  crescent,  ready  to 
extend  its  extremities  so  as  to  coil  itself  round  Europe,  while^ 
Spain  defended  the  right  wing,  and  France  and  England,  Italy 
and  Germany,  boldly  taking  the  offensive,  attacked  the  enemy's 
centre  by  means  of  the  crusades.  Russia  had  done  that  sort  of 
fighting,  in  her  own  southern  deserts,  against  the  Petchen^gs,  the 
P61ovtsy ,  and  other  nomads  of  Turkish  race,  bearing  the  brunt  of 
the  strife  against  Asia,  long  before  the  great  invasion  of  the  thir- 
teenth century.  Being  placed  at  the  most  perilous  outpost,  in  the 
neighborhood  of  the  most  extensive  gathering-place  of  the  Bar- 
barians, her  fall  was  a  foregone  conclusion.  The  Russian  princes, 
united  against  the  hosts  of  Djinghiz-Khan,  had  valiantly  held  out 
against  the  first  shock  on  the  Kalka  (1224),     A  second  invasion 

256 


HISTORY  AND    THE  ELEMENTS  OF  CIVILIZATION.      2$/ 

encountered  resistance  only  behind  the  walls  of  cities.  The  two 
capitals,  Vladimir  and  Kief,  were  taken  at  the  first  onslaught.  It 
seemed  as  though  the  Russian  nation  was  to  vanish,  and  those 
immense  plains,  a  prolongation  of  Asia,  were  to  become,  definitely, 
Asiatic. 

Nature,  after  preparing  the  invasion,  herself  marked  its  bounds. 
The  Tatars,  now  masters  of  the  steppes  in  the  southeast,  which 
felt  to  them  very  much  like  home,  grew  ill  at  ease  as  soon  as  they 
began  to  lose  themselves  in  the  forests  of  the  north.  They  did 
not  settle  there.  These  regions  were  too  European  to  suit  their 
Tialf-nomadic  habits,  and  they  cared  more  for  tribute-payers  than 
for  subjects.  So  the  kniazes  received  their  principalities  back 
from  the  hands  of  the  Mongols — as  fiefs.  They  had  to  submit  to 
the  presence  near  their  person  of  a  sort  of  Tatar  "residents," — 
the  baskcLkSy  whose  duty  it  was  to  take  the  census  and  to  collect 
the  taxes.  They  were  compelled  to  take  the  long,  long  journey 
to  the  "  Horde,"  often  encamped  in  the  heart  of  Asia,  in  order  to 
receive  their  investiture  from  the  successors  of  Djinghiz,  and  ended 
by  becoming  the  vassals  of  a  vassal  of  the  "  Great-Khan."  At 
this  price  Russia  retained  her  religion,  her  dynasties,  and — thanks 
to  her  clergy  and  her  princes — ^her  nationality. 

Never  yet  was  nation  put  through  such  a  school  of  patience 

and  abject  submission.      St.  Alexander  Nevsky — the  Russian  St. 

Louis — is  the  type  of  the  princes  of  that  epoch,  when  heroism  was 

taught  to  cringe.     Alexander,  the  victor  over  the  Swedes  and  the 

German  knights  of  the  Baltic,  who,  instead  of  assisting  Russia, 

strove  to  wrest  from  her  a  few  wretched  roods  of  land,  was  forced, 

if  he  would  protect  his  people,  to  make  himself  very  small  indeed 

before  the  Tatars.      The  Russian  princes,  in  their  dealings  with 

them,  had  no  weapons  but  supplication,  presents,  and — intriguing. 

Of  these  they  made  use  largely  for  the  preservation,  or  even 

aggrandizement,  of  their  power,  freely  denouncing  and  slandering 

one  another  to  the  foreign  masters.     Under  this  humiliating  and 

impoverishing  domination  the  germs  of  culture  kid  in  the  old 
17 


258      THE  EMPIRE  OF  THE    TSARS  AND   THE  RUSSIANS. 

principalities  withered  up.  The  meagre  and  marshy  region  of  the 
northwest  alone,  the  land  of  N6vgorod  and  Pskof,  secure  against 
invasion,  could,  undercover  of  a  merely  nominal  subjection,  lead 
a  free  and  European  life. 

Of  the  manifold  eflfects  resulting  from  the  yoke  imposed  on  the 
cotmtry,  the  moral  ones  are  perhaps  the  least  obscure.  For  nations, 
as  for  individuals,  slavery  is  unwholesome  ;  it  bows  their  souls  so 
low  that,  even  after  deliverance  has  come,  centuries  are  needed  to 
straighten  them  again.  The  oppressed  are  all  alike ;  bondage 
breeds  servility ;  abasement  breeds  baseness.  Craft  takes  the 
place  of  strength,  which  has  become  useless  ;  finessing,  being  most 
called  for,  becomes  the  universal  quality.  The  Tatar  domination 
developed  in  the  Russians  faults  and  faculties  of  which  their 
intercourse  with  Byzance  had  already  brought  them  the  germs, 
and  which,  tempered  by  time,  have  since  contributed  to  develop 
their  diplomatic  gifts.  /     ' 

Spain  and  Russia,  standing  isolated,  one  at  each  end  of  Europe, 
both  fell  under  the  Mussulman  rule,  and,  as  a  consequence  of  this 
similarity  in  their  position,  the  destinies  of  both  also  are  com- 
parable. Between  the  political  and  religious  development  of  these 
two  countries,  different  as  they  are,  this  double  analogy  created 
peculiar  resemblances  ;  but  on  the  character  of  the  two  nations,  a 
yoke,  apparently  identical,  has  had  the  most  opposite  effects.  ^The- 
Spaniard,  conquered,  but  never  cowed  into  submission,  the  Cas- 
tilian,  who,  to  drive  out  the  infidel,  had  recourse  to  the  sword 
alone,  retains,  to  this  day,  as  an  effect  of  the  invasion,  an  over- 
weening haughtiness,  an  excessive  national  pride,  a  scornful  stiff- 
ness in  his  demeanor  to  strangers.  The  Russian,  forced  to  g^ve 
up  his  arms,  compelled  to  look  for  help  exclusively  to  his  own 
patience  and  suppleness,  has  brought  down  from  the  time  of  his 
bondage  a  character  perhaps  less  dignified,  but  of  which  the  very 
faults  are  less  of  a  danger  to  the  progress  of  his  country  than  are 
the  Spaniard's  qualities.  The  oppression  by  man,  added  to  the 
oppression  by  the  climate,  deepened  certain  traits  already  sketched 


HISTORY  AND   THE  ELEMENTS  OF  CIVILIZATION.     259 

in  by  nature  in  the  Great- Russian's  soul.  Nature  inclined  him  to 
submission,  to  endurance,  to  resignation  ;  history  confirmed  these 
inclinations.     Hardened  by  nature,  he  was  steeled  by  history. ' 

One  of  the  chief  effects  of  the  Tatar  domination  and  all  that 
makes  up  Russian  history,  is  the  importance  given  to  the  national 
worship.  That  again  reminds  one  of  Spain.  Suffering  opens  to 
faith  the  hearts  of  a  people  as  well  as  those  of  individuals ;  reli- 
gion draws  new  vigor  from  public  calamities  as  well  as  from 
private  misfortunes.  Such  an  impulse  must  have  been  deep  and 
enduring  in  the  thirteenth  century  and  in  such  a  country  as 
Russia.  On  all  sides  sprang  up  prophecies  and  apparitions,  every 
city  had  its  wonder-working  eikon  that  could  stay  the  hand  of  the 
foe.  In  the  midst  of  universal  penury,  wealth  flowed  freely  into  the 
churches.  The  black  Byzantine  paintings  were  cased  in  massive 
gold  and  silver,  and  set  with  those  gorgeous  jewels  which  even 
yet  astound  the  traveller.  The  men  crowded  into  the  monasteries 
whose  battlemented  walls  afforded  the  only  retreat  within  which 
peace  of  mind  and  security  of  life  and  limb  could  be  found.  The 
policy  of  the  Tatars  was  wholly  favorable  to  religion  and  the 
clergy.  The  khans,  desirous  to  conciliate  the  conquered  through 
their  religion,  almost  became  its  protectors.  Church  property 
was  by  them  exempted  from  taxes,  and  the  Metropolitans  re- 
ceived from  the  Horde  the  confirmation  of  their  dignity,  like  the 
"  Grand-Kniazes." 

The  domination  of  an  enemy  who  was  a  stranger  to  Christian- 
ity fortified  the  sufferers'  attachment  to  their  worship.  Religion 
and  native  land  were  merged  into  one  faith,  took  the  place  of 

'  The  Spaniards  had  mountains,  where  a  few  can  hold  their  own,  where 
independence  can  always  be  bought  at  the  price  of  hardships  and  watchful- 
ness,— mountains,  which  demand  and  fashion  a  character  and  qualities  the 
exact  opposite  of  those  which  alone  can  ensure  the  preservation  of  the  races 
that  dwell  on  plains,  open  to  all  attacks,  for  whom  danger  and  disaster  are 
one,  from  the  lack  of  fastnesses  to  fall  back  upon.  Where  successful  resist- 
ance is  physically  impossible,  unbending  stubbornness  would  be  suicidal, — 
and  natvire  forbids  wholesale  self-destructiou. 


26o      THE  EMPIRE   OF   THE    TSARS  AND    THE  RUSSIANS. 

nationality  and  kept  it  alive.  It  was  then  that  the  conception 
sprang  up  which  still  links  the  quality  of  Russian  to  the  pro- 
fession of  Greek  orthodoxy,  and  makes  of  the  latter  the  chief 
pledge  of  patriotism.  Such  facts  occur  in  other  nations,  but  it  is 
Russia's  peculiarity  that  all  her  wars  have  had  the  same  eflfect. 
Owing  to  the  differences  in  worship,  her  wars  with  Pole,  Swede, 
or  German  have  assumed  a  religious  character,  just  as  her  long 
crusade  against  Tatar  or  Turk.  Every  war  has  been  to  this  peo- 
ple a  religious  war,  and  patriotism  was  reinforced  by  piety  and 
fanaticism.  In  his  battles  against  infidel,  heretic,  or  Latin,  the 
Russian  learned  to  consider  his  native  land,  the  only  one  exempt 
from  both  the  Mussulman  and  the  Popish  spiritual  yoke,  as  a 
blessed  land,  as  sacred  soil,  and  came  at  last  to  regard  himself, 
after  the  fashion  of  the  Jew,  as  the  chosen  of  God,  until,  filled 
with  religious  reverence  for  his  own  country,  he  named  it  ' '  Holy 
Russia."  \/ 

Upon  Russia's  political  sovereignty  the  Tatar  domination  had 
two  parallel  effects  :  it  hastened  national  unity  and  it  strengthened 
autocracy.  The  country  which,  imder  the  appanage  system,  was 
billing  to  pieces,  was  bound  together  by  foreign  oppression  as  by 
a  chain  of  iron.  Having  constituted  himself  siias^ain  of  the 
"  Grand-Elniazes, "  whom  he  appointed  and  dethroned  at  will, 
the  Khan  conferred  on  them  his  authority.  The  Asiatic  tyranny 
of  which  they  were  the  delegates  empowered  them  to  govern 
tjaannically.  Their  despotism  over  the  Russians  was  derived 
from  their  servitude  under  the  Tatars.  Thus,  thanks  to  the  Horde, 
there  ensued  a  territorial  concentration  of  the  different  principali- 
ties in  the  hands  of  the  Veliki- Kniaz  of  Moscow,  transformed 
into  the  general  agent  of  the  conquerors,  as  well  as  a  political  con- 
centration of  authority.  All  liberties,  all  rights  and  privileges 
disappeared.  The  bell  of  the  vi^tche  ceased  to  call  the  citizens  to 
the  popular  assemblies.  The  boyhrs  and  the  princes  who  used  to 
hold  appanages  in  their  own  right  no  longer  had  any  dignities 
but  those  which  the  Tatar  suzerain  conferred  on  them.     Every 


HISTORY  AND    THE  ELEMENTS  OF  CIVILIZATION.      26 1 

germ  of  free  government,  whether  aristocratic  or  democratic,  was 
stifled.  Nothing  remained  but  one  power,  the  Veliki-Kniaz,  the 
autocrat, — and  such  now,  after  more  than  five  hundred  years, 
still  is  the  basis  of  the  state. 

To  the  Mongols,  said  Karamzln  in  the  beginning  of  the  pres- 
ent century,  Moscow  owes  her  greatness,  and  Russia  owes  autoc- 
racy. This  opinion  nowadays  is  contested  by  Russian  patriots : 
they  prefer  to  seek  for  the  foundations  of  Moscovite  autocracy  in 
the  physical  and  economical  conditions  of  Great-Russia,  in  the 
character  of  the  people  themselves,  in  the  primitive  or  patriarchal 
form  of  their  institutions,  in  their  conception  of  the  family  and  of 
domestic  sovereignty. 

Formerly  it  was  the  fashion  to  account  for  everything  in  Russia 
and  for  Russia  herself,  for  the  character  of  the  nation  as  for  the 
nature  of  its  government,  by  the  Mongol  domination.  Nowadays 
this  view  is  almost  entirely  exploded.  Of  the  contemporary  his- 
torians, the  greater  number  regard  the  long  rule  of  the  Tatars 
merely  as  the  superposition  of  an  alien  element,  which  by  its 
weight,  it  is  true,  lay  heavily  on  the  conquered  people,  but  with- 
out the  manners  or  mind  of  the  Asiatic  invaders  having  at  all 
penetrated  as  far  as  the  hearth  or  the  soul  of  their  Russian  vassals. 
This  contact  of  three  centuries  is  admitted  to  have  had  scarcely 
more  than  indirect  effects,  through  the  isolation  into  which  it 
threw  Russia,  and  the  abrupt  stoppage  to  which  it  brought  her 
moral  growth.''  Indeed  Solovi5f,  the  great  Moscovite  historian, 
has  gone  so  far  as  to  say  that  the  three  centuries  of  subjection  left 
hardly  more  traces  in  Russia  than  the  raids  of  the  Petchenegs  and 
P61ovtsy  of  yore. 

There  is  nothing  astonishing  in  this  reaction  against  the  old 
historians  and  their  antiquated  views.  All  nations  just  now  are 
rehandling  their  histories  in  the  same  sense,  trying  hard  to  reduce 
to  a  minimum  or  to  eliminate  altogether  out  of  their  national  life 

'  Not  a  very  close  contact  either,  since  the  conquerors  did  not  live 
among  the  conquered,  but  only  sent  their  agents  and  collectors. 


262       THE  EMPIRE   OF   THE    TSARS  AND    THE  RUSSIANS. 

all  that  comes  from  abroad,  and  especially  from  conquest.  So  the 
English  often  do  with  regard  to  the  Norman  conquest ;  so  do  the 
French  with  regard  to  German  invasions.  The  reason  is  twofold. 
On  one  side,  the  modem  historian  treats  the  evolution  of  nations 
much  as  the  geologist  does  that  of  our  globe,  and  both  reduce 
more  and  more  the  importance  of  revolutions  and  sudden  catas- 
trophes in  favor  of  slow,  continuous  action  and  permanent 
causes.  On  the  other  side,  under  the  influence  of  frequently  un- 
conscious patriotism,  historians  set  aside  impulses  received  from 
abroad,  smooth  over  the  violent  shocks  of  invasions,  that  their 
peoples  may  appear  to  owe  nothing  but  to  themselves,  and  give 
all  their  attention  to  the  spontaneous  and  internal  development  of 
the  national  genius.  The  new  scientific  methods,  the  tendencies, 
— one  might  call  them  naturalistic  and  biological, — of  modern  criti- 
cism and  history,  strengthen  this  bias.  One  takes  pleasure  in 
considering  nations  as  living  organisms,  each  of  which  has  in  itself 
the  principle  and  the  law  of  its  own  growth.  In  accordance  with 
this  conception,  each  nation  loves  to  vindicate  the  spontaneity  of 
its  genius  and  of  its  historical  development. 

What  the  Russians  do  with  regard  to  the  Tatars,  the  Spaniards 
do  with  regard  to  the  Arabs.  The  peninsula  which,  more  unfor- 
tunate than  Russia,  has  for  centuries,  almost  the  whole  of  it, 
been  under  the  direct  rule  of  Semites  or  Berbers,  denies  having 
undergone  any  moral  fashioning  at  the  hands  of  its  Mussulman 
masters. 

In  such  vindications  there  is  much  truth  :  it  is  neither  the 
Tatar  who  has  made  Russia,  nor  the  Moor  who  has  made  Spain. 
If,  by  a  natural  reaction  against  antiquated  and  exaggerated  views, 
we  now  fall  at  times  into  the  opposite  extreme,  forgetting  that, 
after  all,  a  people  could  not,  without  retaining  some  mark  of  it, 
be  for  several  centuries  in  a  state  of  subjection,  it  appears  beyond 
doubt  that  the  Mussulman  influence  on  Russia  formerly  used  to  be 
greatly  overestimated,  even  to  forgetting  that,  besides  their  religion, 
the  Russians  have  always  preserved  their  own  form  of  government 


HISTORY  AND    THE  ELEMENTS  OF  CIVILIZATION.      263 

and  their  own  laws,  and  that  all  these  things  protected  them 
against  too  servile  an  imitation  of  their  foreign  masters. 

The  nomads  from  the  steppes  of  Asia  are  far  from  having  been 
the  only  historical  teacher  of  Moscovia.  Side  by  side  with  the 
Asiatic  influence  of  the  Mongol  or  Turk  conquerors,  Russia,  as  has 
already  been  said,  was  early  subjected  to  a  more  discreet  but  not 
less  powerful  influence  which  both  preceded  and  survived  that  of 
the  Tatars, — an  influence  which,  instead  of  being  combated  by  the 
beliefs  and  prejudices  of  the  people,  was  strengthened  by  their 
sympathies  and  superstitions.  From  Vladimir  down  to  Peter  the 
Great,  Russia  never  quite  got  clear  of  the  Byzantine  ascendancy 
which  was  exercised  through  the  clergy,  the  schools,  the  laws, 
and  literature.  Is  not  Moscovite  aristocracy,  for  instance,  as  much 
indebted  to  the  Orthodox  court  of  the  emperors  on  the  Bosporus 
as  to  the  half  nomadic  seraglio  of  the  Mongol  khans  ?  If  the 
rigime  of  the  Horde,  which  might  also  be  decorated  with  the 
epithet  of  "patriarchal,"  could  give  so  Asiatic  a  coloring  to 
Tsarism,  grown  up  beneath  its  shade,  was  it  not  of  Byzance  and 
the  Greeks  of  the  I/)wer  Empire  that  the  Russian  princes  bor- 
rowed the  t}^  and  the  model,  together  with  the  forms,  the  eti- 
quette, and  the  very  name  of  their  autocracy,  when,  after  the  fall 
of  Constantinople,  Ivan  III.  assumed  the  imperial  eagle,  as  an 
inheritance  from  the  Paleologues.* 

What  applies  to  autocracy  and  government,  applies  to  a  good 
many  other  things.  A  great  part  of  what,  in  the  manners,  the 
fashions,  arts,  laws  of  the  Moscovite  state,  we  are  tempted  to  as- 
cribe to  the  Tatars,  might  with  equal  justice  be  traced  to  the  By- 
zantines. The  veiling  and  sequestration  of  women,  shut  up  in 
the  tirem,\  were  customs  quite  as  much  at  home  at  Byzance  as 

*  The  Russian  title,  Samodiirjets,  is  nothing  but  the  literal  translation 
of  the  Greek  autocrator  ("  self-ruler  "). 

t  Tiretn,  the  Russian  for  "gynaeceum,"  comes  from  the  Greek  tirem- 
non,  signifying  "chamber,  house."  * 

^  Compare  the  German  thurm  and  the  curtailed  English  tower,  from 
the  French  tour—vn'Ca.  this  again  Italian  torre,  from  the  Latin  turris,  which 
brings  us  back  to  the  Greek  word. 


264      THE  EMPIRE  OF  THE   TSARS  AND   THE  RUSSIANS. 

with  the  Tatars ;  to  Byzance  also  very  likely  belong  the  prostra- 
tions, ' '  with  brow  beating  the  ground ' '  (JchelobitiyS),  and  other 
humiliating  formalities  observed  at  the  court  of  the  ' '  Grand- 
Kniaz  "  ;  to  Byzance,  lastly,  the  long  garments,  the  kafthn  and 
armicik^  to  this  day  worn  by  the  Old-Russians.  And  Byzance 
too  may  be  credited,  through  the  codes  of  her  emperors,  with  the 
scourging  with  rods,  if  not  with  the  kniit  itself,  with  corporal 
punishments  and  elaborate  tortures.  The  same  question  may  be 
asked  concerning  art  and  poetry,  in  which  Asiatic  inspiration  used 
to  be  too  hastily  taken  for  granted.  We  may  venture  to  doubt 
the  opinion  of  those  scholars  who,  in  the  historical  poptdar  songs, 
the  Bylinas,  insist  on  recognizing  imitation  of  Tatar  lays,t  or  of 
those  archaeologists  who,  in  the  Russian  bulb-shaped  cupolas,  flat- 
ter themselves  they  have  found  a  Mongolian  type,  in  vogue  from 
the  Ganges  to  the  Dniepr,  wherever  the  successors  of  Djinghiz 
and  Timur  ruled.  % 

Generally  speaking  it  is  no  easy  task  to  apportion  their  several 
parts  to  the  Mussulman  oppressor  and  the  Orthodox  instructor, 
either  in  private  or  in  public  life,  as  the  peaceable^teacMngs  of  the 
one  generally  confirmed  the  rough  examples  set  by  mfe\Other. 
Between  the  lessons  taken  at  the  schools  of  two  such  different 

*  Still  ka/tdn  comes  from  a  Turkish  or  Tatar  word,  and  armidk  is  an 
Armenian  one.* 

t  On  the  Aryan  vs.  Turanian  origin  of  these  songs,  see  Mr.  A.  Rambaud'a 
Russie  ^pique. 

X  Viollet-le-Duc,  in  his  book  on  Russian  Art,  claims  that  he  can  trace 
everywhere — in  architecture,  in  ornamentation,  in  calligraphy  even — an 
influence  decidedly  Tatar  or  Indian.  Russian  scholars,  such  as  Count  S. 
Strdgonof  and  Busljlyef,  have  shown  how  fanciful  and  erroneous  this  theory 
is,  when  thus  generalized.  They  have  proved,  vrith  the  help  of  the  monu- 
ments, that  most  of  the  strokes  and  ornaments,  which  the  French  architect 
wanted  to  force  on  the  Mongols  and  on  India,  came  in  reality  from  the 
Southern  Slavs  and  from  the  Byzantines.  (See  especially  Busldyef,  in  the 
Critical  Review,  published  in  Moscow — January  and  March,  1879 ;  also  the 
pamphlet  of  the  learned  Father  Mart^of,  in  DArt  Russe,  Arras,  1878.) 

*  Probably  indicating  an  originally  Armenian  garment,  a  lighter,  sleeve- 
less kaftiM,  which  leaves  the  arms,  in  their  wide,  long  colored  shirt-sleeves, 
pleasantly  cool  and  free  for  work  or  exercise. 


HISTORY  AND    THE  ELEMENTS  OF  CIVILIZATION.      265 

masters,  it  is  the  more  difficult  to  discriminate  that,  through  all 
the  oppositions  of  the  two  races  and  the  two  civilizations,  both,  on 
the  whole,  taught  young  Russia  very  much  the  same  things. 
From  Byzance  and  from  Sarai, — from  the  effete  cotut  of  the  super- 
annuated empire  in  its  second  infancy  and  from  the  half  nomadic 
camp  of  uncouth  shepherds, — from  the  pale  heirs  of  classical  tra- 
ditions and  from  the  sturdy  hordes  who  had  become,  through  their 
conversion  to  Islam,  the  disciples  of  the  Arabs  and  Persians, — 
what  most  regularly  came  to  Russia  were  models  of  despotism 
and  examples  of  servitude.  Therefore,  in  the  coarse  web  of  pop- 
ular Russian  life,  it  is  often  difficult  to  separate  these  two  threads, 
both  equally  Oriental,  so  similar  do  their  colors  appear  to  us.  Un- 
fortunately for  the  Russians,  the  threadbare  civilization  of  their 
Christian  instructors,  the  stationary  barbarism  of  their  Moslem 
conquerors,  instead  of  mutually  acting  as  correctives,  or  neutral- 
izing each  other,  only  confirmed  them  in  the  same  faults.  Far 
from  each  counteracting  the  other,  the  double  impulse  drove  them 
along  in  the  same  direction,  and  almost  equally  isolated  them 
from  Europe.  Either  as  the  Tatar's  vassal,  or  as  the  Byzantine's 
pupil,  the  Moscovite  breathed  an  air,  Oriental  if  not  Asiatic,  for 
the  Byzance  of  the  Lower  Empire  was  as  much  related  to  Asia  as 
to  Greece  or  Rome. 

A  terrible  and  wonderful  story  is  that  of  Moscow's  autocracy, 
growing  up  under  the  protecting  shade  of  the  Horde.  Never  did 
such  lowly  beginnings  leap  up  so  rapidly  to  greatness  ;  never  was 
there  more  striking  instance  of  the  power  of  tradition  in  a  sover- 
eign house,  whose  members,  along  with  blood  and  inheritance, 
transmit,  from  child  to  grandchild,  a  sacred  goal  and  task,  whose 
views,  at  first  narrow,  go  widening  from  generation  to  generation, 
the  faculties  themselves  seeming  to  grow  by  a  kind  of  natural 
selection.  * 

*  The  beginnings  and  destinies  of  the  House  of  Savoy — its  straggles,  self- 
imposed  patriotic  mission,  and  ultimate  glorious  success — are  no  unapt 
counterpart  of  those  of  the  House  of  Moscow.     And  the  personally  not  very 


266      THE  EMPIRE   OF   THE    TSARS  AND   THE  RUSSIANS. 

As  men  they  were  crafty,  grasping,  anything  but  chivalrous, 
of  few  scruples,  patiently  building  up  greatness  on  self-abasement ; 
as  princes  they  were  mostly  of  mediocre  parts,  far  from  shining 
with  the  brilliant  qualities  that  distinguished  the  kniazes  of  the 
preceding  epoch  ;  dull-faced,  with  countenances  devoid  of  relief, 
of  individuality,  with  features  that  from  afar  seem  to  run  into  one 
another.*  All  these  Ivans  and  Vassilis  of  the  fourteenth  century 
kept  on  hoarding  wealth  in  their  treasury  and  aggrandizing 
their  patrimony  after  the  fashion  of  a  private  inheritance,  and,  as 
it  appears  from  treaties  and  wills,  without  any  very  well-defined 
political  idea,  more  after  the  manner  of  landholders  anxious  to 
"  round  up  "  their  estates,  than  of  sovereigns  ambitious  of  extend- 
ing their  territories,  f  This  character — private,  domanial — the  vast 
Moscovite  Empire  was  to  preserve  in  its  government  and  adminis- 
tration, through  all  its  achievements  and  conquests,  down  to  the 
reforms  of  Peter  the  Great. 

The  establishment  of  heredity  in  the  direct  line  gave  Moscow 

the  advantage  which  enabled  her  to  triumph  over  all  her  rivals, 

Asiatic  or  European."     A  kniaz  of  Moscow,  Ivan  Kalit^,  obtained 

amiable  but  politically  invaluable  qualities  of  the  early  princes  of  the  Italian 
house — their  craft,  stinginess,  stubbornness,  queerly  combined  with  a  sup- 
pleness often  verging  on  unscrupulousness, — all  these  forcibly  recall  the 
unsympathetic  yet  venerable  figures  of  the  kniazes  and  tsars  of  the  Russian 
house.  Before  the  magnitude  and  righteousness  of  the  results  achieved  in 
both  cases,  history  forgets  to  moralize,  and  is  compelled  to  own  that  here, 
if  ever,  the  end  justified  the  means. 

*  "All  these  Moscow  kniazes,''  says  Soloviof,  "  look  like  one  another. 
In  this  passionless  mask  it  is  difficult  for  the  historian  to  make  out  the 
characteristic  features  of  each.  They  are  all  imbued  with  the  same  idea; 
they  all  tread  the  same  path,  slowly,  cautiously,  by  fits  and  starts,  yet 
inflexibly." 

t  The  word  gossudar,  which  now  signifies  "sovereign,"  and  is  used 
only  in  speaking  of  the  Emperor,  had  then  the  meaning  of  khozidtin, 
"thrifty  landlord  and  farmer"  (a  sort  of  domestic  economist  much  in  the 
spirit  and  after  the  pattern  of  Cato  the  Elder). 

*  Among  the  sources  of  discontent  and  dissensions  with  which  the  old 
appanage  system  abounded,  one  of  the  most  unfailing  was  the  law  regulating 
succession — or  rather  inheritances,  since  it  has  already  been  observed  that 
the  House  of  Rurik  treated  the  land  it  was  their  lot  to  rule  after  the  manner 


HISTORY  AND    THE  ELEMENTS  OF  CIVILIZATION.      267 

from  the  Horde,  about  1330,  the  title  of  "  Grand- Kniaz  "  ;  he  also 
constituted  himself  general  collector  of  taxes  for  the  Tatars,  and 
thus  rapidly  increased  his  wealth  as  well  as  his  power.  His  grand- 
son, Dimitri  Donsk6y,  the  only  hero  of  the  family,  already  felt 
strong  enough  to  put  his  diflferences  with  the  Horde  to  the  test  of 
arms.  Crowned  with  victory  on  the  field  of  Kulikovo,  on  the  Don 
(1380),  he  paid  the  price  of  heavy  reverses  for  his  premature  suc- 
cess. Sometimes  in  open  rebellion,  more  often  the  Tatar  khans' 
humble  tributaries,  Dimftri's  successors  restored,  by  finessing,  the 
Moscovite  power  momentarily  endangered  by  his  bravery. '  While 
Russia,  under  their  rule,  was  working  out  her  unity,  the  Golden 
Horde  was  dismembered  into  three  Khanates.  At  the  end  of  the 
fifteenth  century  appears  Ivan  III.,  a  really  great  monarch,  after 
the  manner  of  the  greatest  among  his  contemporaries,  Louis  XI. 

of  a  private  patrimony.  By  this  law — an  immemorially  old  Slavic  one,  which, 
if  duly  pursued,  might  very  probably  be  traced  back  to  nearly  primeval 
Aryan  antiquity — it  was  not  the  eldest  son  who  succeeded  or  inherited,  but 
the  next  brother,  or  cousin — in  short,  the  oldest  of  the  race,  the  "  Senior." 
This  institution,  which  may  be  designated  as  "  lateral  heredity,"  was  never 
cordially  accepted  by  those  who,  from  a  very  natural  feeling,  law  or  no  law, 
felt  disinherited  and  aggrieved.  Thus  there  was  a  standing  feud  between 
uncles  and  nephews,  brimming  with  incidents  of  violence,  treachery,  and 
cold-blooded  cruelty,  such  as  would  have  enlivened  the  chronicles  of  rival 
tyrant  houses  in  mediaeval  Italy.  It  was  Dimftri,  the  victor  of  the  Don, 
who,  with  far-sighted  political  wisdom,  realized  the  absolute  necessity  of  a 
change  in  the  order  of  succession.  But  it  was  like  cutting  off  an  entail :  he 
could  do  nothing  without  the  consent  of  the  person  immediately  concerned. 
This,  fortunately  for  Russia,  was  Vladimir  the  Brave,  his  heroic  cousin  and 
life-long  friend.  For  the  good  of  the  country  for  whose  deliverance  they 
had  fought  side  by  side  at  Kulikovo,  Vladimir  renounced  his  right  and  claim 
forever,  and  pledged  himself  to  hold  his  young  nephew,  Dimftri's  eldest  son 
Vassili,  ' '  in  the  place  of  elder  brother. ' '  Thus  the  ancient  unnatural  custom 
was  broken  at  last  and  a  rational  order  of  succession  established,  cutting 
off  for  all  future  times  one  mainspring  of  civil  strife. 

'  Yet  the  *'  Mama^  Massacre  " — as  the  battle  on  the  Don  is  often  called, 
from  the  name  of  the  defeated  Tatar  general — is  universally  acknowledged 
to  have  "  broken  the  back  "  of  the  Tatar  domination,  to  borrow  the  pictu- 
resque expression  with  which  Southerners  describe  the  effect  of  the  first  cool 
showers,  which  are  said  to  have  "  broken  the  summer's  back,"  though  they 
may  be  followed  by  many  more  warm  days,  or  even  weeks. 


268      THE  EMPIRE  OF  THE    TSARS  AND   THE  RUSSIANS. 

of  France  and  Ferdinand  the  Catholic.  Ivan  III.  reduces  the 
Khanate  of  Kazan  to  vassalage.  His  grandson,  Ivan  the  IV., 
brings  Kazan  and  Astrakhan  into  subjection.  Ivan  III.  despoils 
the  appanage-holding  princes  ;  Ivan  IV.  abases  the  boyhrs  and 
ancient  families.  The  former  compels  N5vgorod's  submission,  the 
latter  completes  the  proud  republic's  ruin  by  executions  and  trans- 
portation. The  last  principalities,  the  last  free  cities  disappear, 
and  with  them  all  traces  of  individual  rights,  alike  for  princes, 
nobles,  and  people.  Russia  is  one,  from  the  White  to  the  Caspian 
Sea,  and  in  this  empire,  already  the  most  extensive  of  Europe,  there 
(j  is  only  one  master — the  Tsar.  Under  Ivan  IV. — the  Terrible — 
,1  autocracy,  arrived  at  its  zenith,  became  a  sort  of  methodical  Reign 
\\oi Terror.  A  strange  compound  of  craft,  mysticism,  inhuman  in 
his  piety,  sarcastic  in  his  atrocities,  bloodthirsty  in  his  reforms, 
bred  in  the  midst  of  plots  and  suspicion,  possessed  of  a  mind  sin- 
gularly free  and  inquiring  for  his  time  and  country,*  combining 
the  Russian's  practical  sense  with  the  ravings  of  a  maniac,  the 
assassin  of  his  own  son  and  husband  of  as  many  wives  as 
Henry  VIII.,  Ivan  IV.,  the  enemy  of  the  boyhrs,  has,  like  Nero, 
remained  popular.  Too  much  reviled  at  one  time,  possibly  over- 
rated at  the  present  day,  this  royal  leveller  is  the  fierce  fore- 
runner of  Peter  the  Great,  with  whom  the  ballads  sometimes 
confound  him,  and  who  also  might  aptly  have  been  sumamed 
"The  Terrible."" 

Scarcely  delivered  from  the  Tatar  domination,  the  Russians 
spread  themselves  in  all  directions  across  their  vast  plains.    Then 

*  See  the  curious  correspondence  between  Ivan  IV.  and  the  rebel,  Prince 
K^bsky,  also  with  Queen  Elizabeth, 

*  It  might  help  the  imagination  to  form  some  adequate  presentment  of 
this  unique  and  wellnigh  monstrous  historical  figure,  were  we  to  try  to  mix 
together,  then  cast  into  one  mould,  Tiberius,  Louis  XI.,  and  Richelieu,  not 
only  with  their  horrible  individual  instincts  and  qualities,  but  also  with  their 
very  real  greatness  of  political  genius,  statesmanship,  and  patriotism.  The 
objects  of  the  French  king's  and  minister's  life-long  endeavors — their  coun- 
try's aggrandizement  and  unity  and  the  abasement  of  an  ambitious  nobility — 
were  also  those  of  the  Moscovite  tsar.  Even  the  means  used  were  of  much 
the  same  nature. 


HISTORY  AND    THE  ELEMENTS  OF  CIVILIZATION.      269 

they  descended  the  Volga  and  came  out  into  the  Caspian  Sea, 
entered  the  Caucasus  and  Central  Asia,  ascended  the  Kama, 
crossed  the  Ural,  and  a  Cosack  outlaw  conquered  Siberia.' 

Under  the  Tatars,  "the  Plain"  {pNie),  i.  e.,  the  southern 
steppe  region,  had  temporarily  domineered  over  the  northern  forest 
lands,  although  unable  to  assimilate  them.  Under  the  Moscovite 
tsars,  the  forest  region,  now  the  seat  of  an  agricultural  state,  stable 
and  centralized,  such  as  never  could  have  developed  on  the  ' '  dry 
sea  "  of  the  steppes,*  in  its  turn  subjects  the  woodless  region,  and, 
by  the  defeat  of  the  nomads,  by  colonization  and  farming,  incor- 
porates it  into  Europe. 

At  the  same  time,  the  Russians  quickly  turn  towards  the  West, 
towards  the  Baltic  and  the  Dniepr,  their  European  starting-points. 
The  Mongol  invasion  had  separated  Moscovite  Great-Russia  from 
the  cradle  of  Rurik's  empire,  from  White-Russia  and  I^ittle- Russia, 
which,  in  the  meanwhile,  had  fallen  into  the  hands  of  the  I^ithu- 
anians  and  the  Poles.  In  the  north,  the  Swedes  and  the  Teutonic 
Knights,  after  the  Sword- Bearers,  were  holding  the  shores  of  the 
Baltic.  So  that  Moscovia  was  compressed  between  two  rows  of 
hostile  states  which  seemed  ready  to  choke  out  her  breath  :  in  the 
east  the  Tatars,  in  the  west  the  I^ithuanians  and  the  Teutonic 
Order.  And  after  Russia  was  free  from  the  Tatars,  there  still 
remained,  between  her  and  the  West,  a  broad  Christian  barrier,  a 
hostile  wall,  built  up  out  of  her  own  ruins.  She  had  to  cut  her 
way  through,  to  Europe  and  to  the  sea ;  hence  her  strife  with 
Sweden,  the  inheritor  of  the  German  Knights  on  the  Baltic, — 
against  Poland,  the  inheritor  of  I^ithuania,— a  strife  which,  after  all 
but  making  an  end  of  Moscovia,  did  end  by  costing  Poland  her  life. 

The  death  of  Ivan  the  Terrible' s  sons  ushered  in  a  crisis  in 
which  Russia  nearly  fell  to  pieces  ;  the  great  work  of  the  Mosco- 
vite princes,  barely  achieved,  seemed  on  the  point  of  perishing 
along  with  their  family.     In  this  country,  where  sovereignty  was 

•  See  appendix  at  the  end  of  this  chapter. 

♦  A  word  of  Sclovidf,  the  historian. 


2/0      THE  EMPIRE   OF   THE    TSARS  AND    THE  RUSSIANS. 

everything,  it  suddenly  failed.  The  condition  of  Russia  at  that 
period  recalls  that  of  France  at  the  death  of  Charles  VI.,  when  an 
English  king  lorded  it  in  Paris.  The  Tsarian  house  was  extinct ; 
the  Kremlin  was  wrangled  for  by  a  series  of  usurpers  and  pretend- 
ers, supported  by  foreign  arms.  At  one  moment,  the  Poles  were 
encamped  in  Moscow,  and  I^adislas,  a  son  of  the  King  of  Poland, 
was  proclaimed  Tsar.  Russian  nationality  and  Greek  Orthodoxy, 
equally  endangered,  foimd  salvation  in  their  union.  It  was  from 
the  lower  ranks  of  this  people,  to  all  appearance  inert,  that  the 
movement  was  started  which  put  an  end  to  internal  anarchy  and 
foreign  rule.  A  butcher  of  Nijni-N6vgorod,  Mmin  by  name,  pro- 
voked the  popular  rising,  the  direction  of  which  was  entrusted  to 
Prince  {kniaz)  Poj^sky.  The  Poles  having  been  repulsed,  a 
new  family,  that  of  the  Romdnofs,  was  called  to  the  throne  by  the 
zemsky  sobbr,  i.  e.,  "  popular  assembly,"  a  sort  of  States-General. 
In  this  people  who  had  just  rescued  themselves  by  their  own  act, 
the  fact  of  the  throne  being  vacant  awakened  neither  the  sense  of, 
nor  the  wish  for,  liberty.  In  the  words  of  the  Slavophil  Khomiakbf, 
' '  the  people,  having  restored  order  and  made  another  tsar,  retired 
from  political  life."  The  new  Tsarian  House  was  to  have  the 
same  power  as  the  old,  only  it  invested  that  power  with  a  more 
religious,  more  paternal  character.  In  vain  the  example  of  the 
Polish  nobility  and  the  Swedish  aristocracy  aroused  the  emulation 
of  the  boyhrs  ;  in  spite  of  a  few  empty  formulas,*  in  spite  of  the 
"■zimsky  sodbr,"  autocracy  remains  the  law  of  Russia.  The  serf- 
dom of  the  peasant,  tied  to  the  glebe  by  Bonss  Godun6f,  the 
usurper,  was  the  only  advantage  won  by  the  nobles.  Neither 
minorities,  nor  interregnums,  nor  invasions  could  give  to  any  class 
of  the  nation  any  rights  or  liberties  before  the  face  of  the  sovereign. 
A  Russian  was  saying  to  a  foreigner  that  autocracy  raised 
Russia  from  the  groimd,  where  she  lay  prostrate  at  the  Tatars' 
feet ;  to  which  the  foreigner  remarked  that  it  had  raised  her  to 

*The  formula,  "The  boyhrs  have  deliberated,  the  tsar  has  ordained," 
is  well  known. 


HISTORY  AND    THE  ELEMENTS  OF  CIVILIZATION.      2/1 

her  knees.  The  habitual  formulas  used  by  the  Moscovites  in 
addressing  their  sovereigns  leave  far  behind  all  that  was  ever 
invented  in  the  way  of  servility  by  the  courts  of  the  West.  In 
the  public  petitions  or  declarations  high  and  low  entitled  themselves 
the  tsar's  serfs,  his  varlets  or  kholbpy.  Catherine  II.  was  the  first 
to  show  a  repugnance  against  these  abject  designations  ;  they 
were  so  deeply  seated  in  the  nation's  habits  that  they  were  fre- 
quently employed  as  synonyms  for  "subjects."  In  his  famous 
letters  to  Prince  K^rbsky,  Ivan  IV.  calls  the  King  of  Poland  a 
"slave  of  slaves,"  meaning  that  he  was  the  subject  of  his  own 
subjects.  Peter  the  Great  himself,  in  reporting  about  the  siege  of 
Azof,  which  he  was  conducting,  to  Rodom^novsky  whom  he  had 
appointed,  in  play,  to  act  the  part  of  tsar,  took  to  himself,  in 
addressing  this   sham   sovereign,   the   qualification   of  kkolbp.* 

*Ustridlof,  History  of  Peter  the  Great.  Russian  scholars,  indeed,  main- 
tain that  these  designations  were  in  no  way  abject  originally  ;  kholdp 
meaning  simply  "servant.""* 

10  These  and  other  similar  conventional  forms,  waifs  and  strays  of  the 
Tatar  domination  and  of  Byzantine  influence  since  Ivan  III.,  certainly 
have  come  to  be  as  meaningless  as  the  letter  endings  of  European  episto- 
lary etiquette,  especially  in  countries  of  the  so-called  Latin  race.  One  might 
as  well  exclaim  at  the  "  servility  "  of  the  Spanish  national  character  because 
the  Castilian  winds  up  the  long  rigmarole  of  "service  "  and  "devotion" 
and  "  humbleness  "  which  precedes  his  signature  with  the  initials  Q.  S.  P.  B., 
which  stand  for  "  Qui  Sus  PiSs  Besa  " — "  who  kisses  your  feet."  The  Rus- 
sian of  the  lower  classes  never  loses  personal  dignity  in  his  demeanor  to 
superiors,  even  while  using  the  traditional  forms  of  speech,  and  one  of  his 
chief  objections  to  the  Pole  of  the  same  and  indeed  a  far  higher  class — even 
to  the  lower  nobility — is  the  cringing  manner  of  the  latter,  not  merely  in 
words,  but  in  acts,  such  as  kissing  the  hand,  the  hem  of  the  garment,  or — if 
the  difference  of  rank  be  not  quite  so  great— the  shoulder.  Such  things  should 
not  be  taken  too  literally.  And  as  an  offset  to  a  few  offensively  humble  forms, 
we  have  the  fact  that  the  peasant  to  this  day  addresses  his  landlord  and  lady 
and  his  superiors  generally  as  "father"  and  "mother"  {bcitiushka^  tncitushka), 
while  they  respond  with  the  affectionate  "  brother,"  "  little  brother  "  {bril,t, 
brhtiets),  both  using  the  familiar  "thou,"  the  only  form  of  address  known 
in  Russian,  as  in  Latin,  Greek,  and  all  ancient  or  root-languages,  until 
Peter's  wholesale  innovations,  extending  to  language  itself,  introduced  the 
absurd  use  of  the  second  person  plural.  The  "Occidentals"  strenuously 
advocate,  in  word  and  practice,  the  use  of  the  European  forms  of  politeness 
in  the  intercourse  with  the  lower  class — and  it  is  notorious  that  since  they 
have  in  great  part  succeeded,  the  two  classes  are  further  from  mutual  under- 
standing than  they  were  before.  The  old  cordial  familiarity  is  being  frozen 
out,  and  it  will  be  long  before  there  is  between  them  the  common  level  of 
average  culture  which  might  take  its  place. 


272       THE  EMPIRE   OF   THE    TSARS  AND   THE   RUSSIANS, 

Nor  was  this  an  empty  form  under  Peter  any  more  than  undei 
Ivan  :  the  sovereign  did  dispose  at  will  of  the  property  as  well  as 
the  lives  of  his  subjects.  Being  in  the  habit  of  prostrating  them- 
selves before  their  masters  until  their  brows  struck  the  ground, 
the  Russians  gave  the  name  of  "brow-beating"  (JchelobUiyS'),  to 
the  written  petitions  placed  in  the  tsar's  hands.  In  token  of 
self-abasement  before  the  sovereign,  even  when  not  personally 
admitted  to  his  presence,  the  Moscovite  boyhrs,  instead  of  signing 
their  full  names  in  their  petitions,  used  servile  diminutives. 
These  degrading  formulas  descending  from  class  to  class,  every  one 
making  himself  small  before  his  superiors,  baseness,  hand  in  hand 
with  arrogance,  permeated  the  entire  nation  down  to  its  lowest 
depths. 

It  is  but  just  to  note  that  these  formulas,  so  repugnant  to  West- 
erners, were  ennobled  by  religfious  sentiment  and  simple  earnest- 
ness ;  there  also  lingered  in  the  custom  some  of  that  patriarchal 
feeling  which  we  encounter  everywhere  in  Russia  even  to 
this  day.  The  tsar,  as  the  landlord,  was  called  "father,"  and 
these  names,  taken  from  the  dearest  family  ties,  which  even  yet 
lend  the  forms  of  popular  politeness  a  character  so  primitive  and 
aflfectionate,  were  not,  to  the  people,  empty  titles.  The  last  of  the 
peasants  in  speaking  to  the  tsar,  could  say  ' '  thou  ' '  to  him  ;  he 
saw  in  him  a  natural  protector  against  the  oppression  of  the 
boyhrs,  and  all  tsars  have  regarded  themselves  as  such.  The 
sovereign  was  at  the  same  time  the  father,  wielding  absolute 
authority  over  his  children,  and  the  master,  the  supreme  landlord, 
disposing  of  the  land  and  of  all  things  therein  as  of  his  property. 

An  incident  from  the  history  of  the  sixteenth  century  places  in 
bold  relief,  together  with  the  rigorous  severities  of  tsarism,  the 
submissiveness  of  the  subjects,  dignified  and  touching  even  in  its 
self-abasement.  The  occasion  was  the  reduction  of  Pskof,  N6v- 
gorod's  sister  city,  by  Vassili,  son  of  Ivan  III.,  and  father  of  Ivan 
IV.,  both  decorated  by  their  contemporaries  with  that  surname  of 
"  dread  "  or  "  terrible  "  (grdzny),  which  appears  to  suit  the  entire 


HISTOR  Y  AND    THE  ELEMENTS  OF  CIVILIZA  TION      2/3 

dynasty  or  rigime.  ' '  Thy  patrimony,  the  city  of  Pskof,  throws 
itself  at  thy  feet, ' '  said  the  delegates  of  one  of  the  two  or  three 
Russian  cities  which  have  known  liberty,  to  Vassili,  come  to  take 
from  them  their  last  franchises.  "  Deal  mercifully  by  thy  old 
patrimony.  We,  thy  orphaned  children,  are  attached  to  thee  and 
thine  unto  the  end  of  time.  To  God  and  thee  all  is  lawful  in  your 
patrimony."*  Vassili  sent  them  word  that  it  was  his  will  to 
suppress  the  viitchi  and  all  the  privileges  which  his  ancestors  had, 
under  oath,  awarded  to  Pskof."  "It  is  written  in  our  annals," 
said  a  citizen  at  the  last  popular  assembly  called  together  in  the 
city,  ' '  that  the  men  of  Pskof  swore  allegiance  to  the  '  Grand- 
Kniaz, '  who  thereupon  permitted  them  to  live  freely  according  to 
their  customs.  It  is  said  that  the  Divine  Wrath  shall  smite  him  who 
shall  not  keep  his  oath.  By  the  grace  of  God,  our  lord  this  day 
disposes  after  his  pleasure  of  Pskof,  his  patrimony,  of  us  all  and 
the  bell  that  was  wont  to  call  us  together.  We  have  not  perjured 
ourselves,  we  will  not  raise  our  hand  against  our  sovereign  ;  we 
are  rejoiced  at  his  presence,  and  only  beseech  him  not  to  annihi- 
late us  quite."  The  Pskovites,  with  tears,  took  down  the  bell 
which,  for  centuries,  had  been  wont  to  call  them  to  the  vietchi, 
Vassili,  having  entered  the  city,  assured  them  of  his  good  graces, 
and  having  bidden  together  the  chief  inhabitants,  ordered  the 
announcement  to  be  made  to  them,  that  they  should,  with  their 
wives  and  children,  depart  from  their  native  city,  to  settle  down 
in  the  centre  of  Russia,  and  * '  live  there  happily  by  the  grace  of 
the  tsar."  That  same  night,  three  hundred  families  were  started 
on  their  way  to  Moscow,  and  soon  after,  Moscovites  from  the  basin 
of  the  Volga  came,  by  Vassili's  order,  to  occupy  on  the  shores  of 
lyake  Peipus  the  place  of  the  transported  Pskovites.  Similar  pro- 
ceedings, renewed  from  the  usages  of  ancient  Nineveh  and  Baby- 

*  Chronicle  of  Pskof  quoted  by  Karamzin.  This  parallel  between  God 
and  the  Tsar  often  recurs  in  the  Russian  Chronicles,  and  still  survives  in 
popular  adages.  "  It  has  pleased  God  and  the  Tsar  "— "  God  and  the  Tsar 
will  see  to  it " — are  proverbial  expressions. 


274       THE  EMPIRE   OF   THE    TSARS  AND   THE  RUSSIANS. 

Ion,  had  been  employed  towards  N6vgorod.  By  such  means  did 
the  tsars  work  out  the  unification  and  levelling  of  their  empire. 
Such  examples  help  us  to  comprehend  the  autocracy  of  Peter 
and  Nicolas. 

This  concentration  of  all  branches  of  authority  and  of  the 
whole  of  national  life  in  one  hand — ^was  it  entirely  a  produce  of 
history,  of  Tatar  oppression,  and  Byzantine  teachings  ?  By  no 
means,  and  the  Russian  historians  are  justified  in  denying  it. 
The  cause  lies  in  the  country's  nature  and  the  soil  itself,  in  the 
physical  and  economic  conditions  of  Russia,  in  the  extent  and 
poverty  of  the  meagre  forest  regions  in  which  the  Moscovite  state 
g^ew  up ;  it  lies  in  the  disproportion  between  the  immensity  of 
the  territory  and  the  sparseness  of  the  population  ;  and  these 
things,  from  Rurik  to  Peter  the  Great,  account  for  the  mould  into 
which  the  Russian  government  has  been  cast,  for  the  slowness  of 
the  country's  political  and  civil  development.  By  these,  too,  the 
long  period  of  formation,  and,  so  to  speak,  of  the  country's 
embryonic  historical  life,  is  accounted  for  ;  these  explain  what 
Solovibf  calls  "the  long  duration  of  the  fluid  state  period." 
What,  indeed,  can  be  more  difl&cult  than  to  base  something  solid 
and  lasting  on  those  boundless  plains,  over  which  freely  rolled  the 
swell  of  invasion,  where  the  population  forever  seemed  about  to 
sink  and  be  lost,  like  streamlets  in  the  sands  of  the  desert,  so  that, 
to  keep  it  in  place  and  fix  it  to  the  soil,  recourse  had  to  be  had  to 
serfdom  ! 

In  such  a  country,  the  frailer  the  bonds  between  the  various 
regions  and  the  various  tribes,  the  stronger  the  authority  had  to 
be,  that  was  to  be  capable  of  creating  and  keeping  alive  a  state. 
Thus  Solovibf  could  say  that  the  excessive  energy,  the  boundless 
strain  of  the  government  organism,  was  a  natural  consequence  of 
the  feebleness  and  incomplete  development  of  the  body  politic. 
The  weakness  of  internal  and  spontaneous  ties  was  compensated 
by  external  centralization,  by  the  mechanical  concentration  of  all 
the  national  forces  in  the  hands  of  autocracy. 


HISTORY  AND    THE  ELEMENTS  OF  CIVILIZATION.      27$ 

In  what  way  did  the  Russia  of  the  first  Romdnofs,  the  Mosco- 
via  of  the  seventeenth  century,  belong  to  Europe  ?  Constructed 
on  Slavic  foundations  by  Teutonic  leaders,  cemented  by  Chris- 
tianity under  the  influence  of  the  "New  Rome,"  the  Russia 
which  the  Tatars  laid  low  did  have  European  bases.  The 
Russia  which  Moscow  raised  on  her  own  ruins  was  patched  out 
of  heterogeneous  materials,  partly  borrowed  from  Asia  :  it  was  a 
building  of  mongrel  architecture,  made  up  of  Byzantine  and 
Mongol,  of  Gothic  and  Renaissance,  a  building  resembling  the 
church  of  Vassili  Blajennoy,  quaint  wellnigh  to  monstrosity, 
which  was  built  in  Moscow  under 'Ivan  the  Terrible. 

One  thing  strikes  the  student  of  Russian  history  :  its  barren- 
ness, its  comparative  lack  of  interest.  Through  all  its  vicissitudes, 
it  is  wanting  in  those  large  movements,  religious  or  intellectual, 
those  broad  epochs,  social  or  political,  which  are  the  landmarks 
of  the  stormy  and  active  lives  of  the  Western  nations.  In  fact,  the 
history  of  Russia  differs  from  that  of  other  nations  more  by  what 
it  lacks  than  by  what  it  possesses  of  its  own,  and  to  each  gap  in 
her  past  answers  a  gap  in  the  present,  which  time  could  not  fill, — 
a  gap  in  her  culture,  her  society,  at  times  in  the  Russian  mind 
itself.  This  blank  in  the  country's  history,  this  absence  of  certain 
traditions  and  institutions  in  a  people  who  has  not  yet  learned 
how  to  appropriate  those  of  others,  seems  to  me  one  of  the  secret 
causes  of  the  negative  bent  characteristic  of  the  Russian  intellect, 
one  of  the  remote  sources  of  nihilism,  or  "  nothingism,"  in  morals 
and  in  politics. 

In  this  state,  over  which  ten  centuries  have  already  passed, 
nothing  is  consecrated  by  time.  The  country  is  old,  yet  all  therein 
is  new.  "  In  your  country,"  one  of  the  men  who  have  known 
Russia  best  wrote  to  a  Russian,  ' '  nothing  is  reverenced,  because 
nothing  is  old."  * 

*  Joseph  de  Maistre,  letter  to  Prince  Kozldfsky,  dated  October  24, 
1815.  Twenty  years  later  Tchaaddyef  expressed  an  idea  the  same  in  sub- 
stance, when  he  said:  ''The  civilization  of  mankind  has  not  touched  us. 


276      THE  EMPIRE   OF   THE    TSARS  AND   THE  RUSSIANS. 

Russian  history,  compared  to  that  of  the  Western  nations, 
appears  entirely  negative.  Moscovia  never  had  a  feudal  system 
which,  along  with  the  conception  of  reciprocity  in  service  and 
duty,  fostered  the  feeling  of  right ;  nor  chivalry,  from  which  the 
West  received  the  feeling  of  honor, — according  to  Montesquieu, 
the  foundation  of  the  monarchy, — and  which,  where  liberty 
became  extinct,  still  maintained  alive  human  dignity.  Russia 
never  had  any  class  of  men  answering  to  the  French  gentilhomme, 
and  her  only  apology  for  a  chivalry  was  the  Cosacks — bands  of 
deserters  and  runaway  serfs,  republics  of  adventurers,  half 
crusaders,  half  pirates,  whose  savage  freedom  was  guaranteed 
them  by  the  steppe.  n~^ 

Russia  never  had  communes,  nor  charters,  nor  a  real  burgher- 
dom,  nor  a  third  estate.  N6vgorod,  Pskof,  Vi^tka,  stationed  at 
the  uttermost  ends  of  the  country,  were  exceptions,  creditable  to 
the  genius  of  the  nation,  but  which  did  not  perceptibly  influence 
its  development.  Besides,  the  cities  were  too  few.  Moscovia, 
but  just  freed  from  the  Tatar  yoke  and  forthwith  levelled  by 
autocracy,  could  scarcely  be  said  to  have  in  reality  more  than  one 
dty,  the  monarch's  residence,  and  this  capital  itself  was  nothing 
but  a  huge  village.  Moscovia  was  a  commonwealth  of  peasants, 
a  rural  empire.  Now,  without  cities  there  can  be  no  wealth,"  nor 
art,  nor  science,  nor  political  life  ;  in  short,  etymology  tells  the 
story  :  without  cities — civitates — no  civilization. 

As  in  the  countries  of  the  West,  so  in  Russia,  centralization 
meant  monarchy  ;  but  Russia  had  had  none  of  the  instruments  or 
institutions  of  European  monarchies ;  neither  parliaments  nor 
universities,  men  of  the  robe,  nor  the  pen.  She  had  sovereigns ; 
she  never  had  a  court.  Shut  up  in  the  tirem^ — the  gynaeceum 
bequeathed  by  the  Tatars  or  Byzance, — the  tsaritsas  and  tsarevnas 

What  with  other  nations  has  long  since  passed  into  their  life,  with  us  is  to 
this  day  speculation  and  theory."  Herzen  himself  said  much  the  same 
thing,  when  he  wrote  {On  the  Development  of  Revolutionary  Ideas  in 
Russia) :  "  We  are  untrammelled  by  the  past,  because  our  past  is  empty, 
poor,  narrow." 


HISTOR  Y  AND    THE  ELEMENTS  OF  CIVILIZA  TION.      2// 

left  the  tsars  to  the  coarseness  of  their  sex.  Moscow  had  neither 
castles  nor  palaces.  The  Kremlin  was  nothing  but  a  combination 
of  fortress  and  convent,  where  low  pleasures  fit  for  common 
soldiers  alternated  with  a  tiresome  ecclesiastical  pomp,* 

The  Russian  Church  had  a  national  clergy,  patriotic  and 
respected.  She  also  had  her  monasteries,  and,  later  on,  her 
synods  or  national  councils.  But  she  had  no  religious  orders,  no 
scholastic  training,  no  great  heresies,  nor  the  grand  councils  of 
the  I^atin  Church.  Russia  had  ignorant  sects — has  them  still — 
rustic,  with  no  knowledge  of  the  ancient  tongues.  She  remained 
outside  of  the  Reformation,  of  the  learned  and  literary  polemics, 
which,  through  the  liberty  of  thought,  led  to  political  liberty.  A 
stranger  to  the  Reformation,  she  was  one  also  to  the  Renaissance. 
Classical  antiquity,  which  once  upon  a  time  had  just  brushed  her, 
did  not  become  naturalized  in  Russia,  as  it  did  in  Germany,  as  by 
a  second  education. 

Bound  to  Byzance  by  the  ties  of  religion  and  neighborliness, 
Russia  probably  sheltered  a  greater  number  of  Greek  emigrants 
than  Italy  and  the  West.  After  the  fall  of  Constantinople  and 
the  marriage  of  Ivan  III.  to  the  heiress  of  the  last  emperors,  the 
Greeks  began  to  flock  to  Moscow.  Thither  they  brought  Byzan- 
tine etiquette  and  devotional  tracts.  They  did  not  find  there,  as 
in  the  West,  the  classical  letters  and  genius  smouldering  under 
the  ashes  of  antiquity,  w^aiting  to  be  revived.  Though  Russia 
did,  besides  the  Greeks,  import  a  few  Italian  artists  and  a  few 
German  artificers,  she  harbored  neither  the  arts  nor  the  literature 
of  Europe,  nor  printing,  the  propagator  of  thought,  nor  the 
geographical  discoveries  which,  together  with  the  conception  of 
the  world,  widened  the  modem  mind.* 

In  emerging  from  under  the  Tatar  domination,    Moscovia 

*  See  the  two  works  of  Zabidlin,  on  the  Domestic  Life  of  the  Russian 
Tsars  and  Tsarltsas. 

*  Ivan  the  Terrible  patronized  the  introduction  of  printing  in  Moscow, 
but  the  first  presses,  looked  on  suspiciously  by  the  people,  produced  only 
books  of  devotion. 


278       THE   EMPIRE   OF   THE    TSARS  AND    THE  RUSSIANS. 

awoke  in  the  midst  of  the  Middle  Ages — minus  crusades  and 
knighthood  ;  minus  troubadours  and  trouvires,  scholastics  and 
legists — the  Middle  Ages  shorn  of  romance.  No  Reform,  no 
Renaissance,  no  Revolution — Russia's  later  history  must  needs  be 
more  incomplete  still.  Of  the  great  facts  and  great  epochs  of 
European  life,  from  the  twelfth  to  the  eighteenth  century,  she 
felt  only  a  feeble  shock.  What  would  a  Western  nation  be  that 
had  missed  all  that  ?  And  with  what  could  such  gaps  be  filled  ? 
In  the  seventeenth  century,  Russia  was  as  yet  but  a  rudimen- 
tary embryonic  organism  ;  outside  of  the  Church,  she  possessed 
only  two  institutions,  one  at  the  basis,  the  other  at  the  summit,  of 
the  state,  and  both  not  particularly  favorable  to  the  development 
of  individuality :  the  commune  with  mutual  solidarity  of  the 
members,  and  autocracy ;  the  bond  between  them — serfdom. 
The  Tatar  oppression  and  the  struggle  for  life  against  Poland 
had  absorbed  all  the  country's  vitality.  Siey^,  to  those  who 
asked  him  what  he  had  been  doing  during  the  Terror,  used  to 
reply  :  "I  lived."  To  a  similar  question  concerning  her  long 
inertness  Russia  might  have  given  a  similar  answer.  In  order 
not  to  get  crushed  quite  out  of  existence  by  the  Mongols,  she  was 
compelled  to  sham  death  for  centuries.  The  whole  task  of 
Moscovia  consisted  in  making,  materially,  a  nation  of  herself. 
Similar  to  a  child  of  a  robust  temperament,  she  came  strengthened 
and  steeled  out  of  trials  that  should  have  killed  her ;  but  the 
assaults  which  gave  her  bodily  vigor  hindered  her  intellectual 
development.  Compared  to  the  other  nations  of  Europe,  she  had 
but  a  coarse,  rustic  bringing  up  ;  the  masters,  and  even  the  time 
for  cultivating  the  mind,  were  wanting. 


APPENDIX  TO  BOOK  IV.     CHAPTER  HI.     (See  note  9,  p.  269.) 

THE   FIRST  CONQUEST  OF  SIBERIA. 

Unlike  so  many  important  names  of  peoples  and  places  that  of  Siberia 

gives  no  occasion  for  learned  disputes  as  to  its  origin.     There  is  no  obscurity 

about  it — of  course  up  to  a  certain  point,  beyond  which  our  interest  does 

not  extend.    We  know  that,  as  early  as  the  beginning  of  the  sixteenth  cen- 


HISTORY  AND    THE  ELEMENTS  OF  CIVILIZATION.      279 

tury,  Sibir  was  the  name  of  a  Tatar  kingdom  on  the  Asiatic  side  of  the  Ural, 
along  the  rivers  Tob61,  Irt^-sh,  and  T<ira.  After  the  conquest,  by  Ivan  the 
Terrible,  of  Kazdn  and  Astrakhan  the  Siberian  Khan  Yediger  tendered  his  vol- 
tintary  submission,  in  the  hope  of  finding  protection  against  the  rebels  and 
pretenders  who  beset  his  life  and  throne.  In  vain  ;  he  soon  after  lost  both  at 
the  hands  of  the  neighboring  Kirghiz  Khan  Kutch^m,  who  immediately  pro- 
ceeded to  make  trouble  for  the  Russian  pioneer-borderers  on  this  side  the 
mountain  chain,  which,  from  its  peculiar  tameness  and  want  of  altitude, 
never  was  a  serious  obstacle  to  raids  and  invasions.  The  greatest  sufferers 
from  this  state  of  things  were  the  Strdgonofs,  a  wealthy,  enterprising  family 
who  owned  untold  thousands  of  acres — to  be  had  for  the  taking — in  the  wild 
borderland  which  now  is  the  government  of  Perm.  The  founder  of  this  famous 
family's  greatness  had  gone  out  into  the  wilderness  early  in  the  fifteenth  cen- 
tury, and  towards  the  end  of  the  sixteenth  they  were  the  centre  and  soul  of  a 
large  Russian  colony,  and  had  opened  the  industries — especially  salt-boiling, 
and  fur  trade — which  have  always  been  this  region's  main  source  of  wealth. 
In  1581,  finding  themselves  unable  to  cope  with  the  many  nomadic  tribes — 
Ostizlk,  Vogul,  Tcheremiss,  etc., — who  harassed  the  Russian  settlements  on 
all  sides,  with  more  united  and  imremitting  efforts  since  they  were  sure  of 
support  from  the  Siberian  khan  beyond  the  mountains,  the  Strogonofs 
obtained  from  the  Tsar  an  order  to  the  Voyevdd  or  military  commander  of 
the  Permian  region  enjoining  him  to  lend  them  armed  assistance  and  author- 
ize them  to  enlist  men  from  the  colony  and  supply  them  with  arms.  They 
stretched  this  rather  elastic  decree  to  its  widest  reach  and,  in  1582,  sent  across 
the  Ural  a  regular  expedition,  under  command  oi ataman  Yerm^k  Timof^ye- 
vitch,  a  Cosack  ofl5cer  in  the  government's  service  stationed  at  Perm,  thus 
taking  a  decidedly  aggressive  attitude  instead  of  limiting  their  measures  to 
self-defence.  When  Ivan  IV.  heard  of  this  undoubtedly  arbitrary  proceeding, 
he  was  very  angry  and  sent  off  post-haste  special  messengers  to  inform  the 
Strdgonofs  of  the  fact  and  order  them  to  recall  their  forces  and  send  Yermdk 
back  to  Perm,  to  his  post  of  service,  and,  furthermore,  to  beware  how  they 
attacked  or  provoked  any  quarrel  with  the  Siberian  "Sultan."  Themes- 
sage  came  too  late ;  the  Cosacks  had  already  half  achieved  their  won- 
derful venture. 

It  will  be  seen  from  this  that  Yermjlk  can  in  no  wise  be  described  as  a 
brigand  or  "outlaw," — an  error,  however,  which  has  crept  into  popular 
history  and  has  only  recently  been  rectified.  What  gave  rise  to  it  may  have 
been  the  fact  that  the  men  under  his  command  were  picked  for  bravery  but 
certainly  not  for  law-abiding  morality.   It  was  a  handful  of  daredevil  adven> 


280      THE  EMPIRE   OF   THE    TSARS  AND    THE  RUSSIANS. 

turers,  of  the  same  mettle  as  those  of  Cortez  and  Pizzaro,  of  the  kind  that  do 
great  things  and  shrink  from  few.  His  own  chosen  lieutenant,  Ivan  Koltsd, 
was  an  outlaw,  under  sentence  of  death,  for  capturing  and  sacking  a  small 
town  of  the  Nogay.  They  had  a  few  cannon  and  muskets,  and  were  well 
supplied  with  all  things  needful,  including  guides  and  interpreters.  Beyond 
that,  no  resources  nor  real  knowledge  of  the  country.  They  started  in  boats 
up  a  not  very  considerable  river,  from  which  they  soon  had  to  strike  inland. 
The  boats  had  to  be  left.  But  whenever  possible,  they  still  kept  to  the 
rivers,  a  mode  of  transit  familiar  to  them  from  their  experience  in  navi- 
gation on  the  Volga,  and  each  time  had  to  build  new  boats,  an  operation 
fraught  with  delay  and  danger  in  the  midst  of  a  hostile  countrj',  notwith- 
standing the  abundance  of  material.  At  times,  where  the  distance  was 
short  and  the  soil  even  from  one  river  to  another,  they  carried  or  dragged 
them  across.  Thus  they  came  to  a  town  ruled  by  a  third-class  khan  tribu- 
tary to  Kutchiim.  The  natives  were  taken  utterly  by  surprise  ;  besides,  they 
had  never  seen  firearms,  so  fled  at  the  first  discharge.  Some  never  stopped 
till  they  had  reached  the  presence  of  KutchAm,  who  heard  from  them  the 
first  tidings  of  the  Russian  invasion  :  "  Warriors  have  come  into  our  land," 
the  fugitives  reported,  "with  bows  which  give  forth  flashing  fire,  and  strike 
like  to  the  lightning  from  heaven.  No  arrows  are  to  be  seen,  yet  they  wound 
and  kill,  and  no  armor  avails  for  protection.  They  pierce  clean  through 
our  plate  and  mail  armor." 

Now  that  Kutchim  was  aroused,  the  crisis  came  quickly.  The  Cosacks 
were  pursuing  quite  a  triumphant  course  doMm  the  river  Tobdl,  when  they 
were  arrested  by  a  large  and  comparatively  regular  army,  gathered  from  all 
the  tribes  subject  to  Kutchdm,  and  led  by  a  son  or  nephew  of  his  own. 
There  were  thirty  Siberians  to  one  Russian.  The  Cosacks  held  a  council  of 
war.  Several  advised  retreat.  The  greater  part  applauded  Yerm^  when 
he  said  :  "Retreat?  Whither?  It  is  autumn.  The  rivers  are  beginning 
to  freeze.  Do  not  let  us  lay  up  an  evil  name  for  ourselves.  Let  us  be 
mindful  of  the  promise  we  made  to  honorable  men  (the  Strdgonofs),  before 
God.  If  we  turn  back,  shame  will  be  ours  and  the  name  of  word-breakers. 
Whereas,  if  God  Almighty  help  us,  our  memories  shall  not  die  out  among 
men,  and  glory  will  be  ours  forever."  One  would  almost  think  that  Shake- 
speare had  inspired  himself  from  the  old  Russian  chronicler,  when  he 
penned  the  famous  harangue  of  Henry  V. 

The  Tatars  fought  desperately,  but  the  Cosacks  routed  them  completely, 
though  with  the  loss  of  107  men — a  large  one  for  their  small  force. 
Kutch^m  himself  snatched  together  all  he  could  of  his  treasure  and  disap- 


HISTORY  AND   THE  ELEMENTS  OF  CIVILIZATION.      28 1 

peared  into  the  woods.  When  Yerm^k  entered  the  capital,  Sibir,  or  Isker, 
it  was  empty,  and  yielded  a  mighty  booty  in  furs,  precious  tissues,  and  all 
sorts  of  valuables.  Soon  the  surrounding  princelings  began  to  drop  in 
and  make  their  submission  ;  Yerm^k,  suddenly  developing  remarkable 
statesmanship,  treated  them  with  great  kindness  and  courtesy,  and,  after 
receiving  their  oath  of  allegiance  in  the  name  of  the  Tsar,  forbade  his  men, 
under  the  severest  penalties,  to  offer  the  slightest  violence  to  the  natives. 
At  the  same  time  he  made  good  use  of  the  enforced  idleness  of  the  long 
winter,  by  sending  his  lieutenant,  Ivan  Koltsd,  with  a  small  retinue,  to  the 
Tsar,  to  inform  him  that  God  had  given  into  his  hand  the  land  of  Sibir,  and 
beg  for  reinforcements,  also  request  that  a  Voyevdd  might  be  sent,  to 
take  official  possession  of  the  country.  Ivan  the  Terrible  received  Koltsd 
most  graciously,  granted  him  a  free  pardon,  and  sent  him  back  with  presents 
to  Yerm£Lk, — the  fur  robe  he  was  wearing  in  the  number,  than  which  no 
greater  mark  of  sovereign  favor  could  be  given.  The  Voyevdd  Yerm^k  had 
asked  for  accompanied  Koltsd,  also  a  considerable  detachment  of  soldiers. 

After  this  things  went  wrong  for  a  time.  Most  of  the  first  conquerors 
perished  in  one  way  or  another,  when  spring  of  1584  had  reopened  hostil- 
ities, and  Yerm^k  himself  fell  into  an  ambush  on  the  banks  of  the  river 
Irtish,  and  was  drowned  while  trying  to  swim  in  his  heavy  armor,  out  to 
his  barge,  which  was  stationed  in  the  middle  of  the  river.  But  he  had  done 
his  work,  and  it  was  never  abandoned.  Slowly  but  steadily,  one  Siberian 
coimtry  after  another  was  subdued  and  thrown  open  to  colonization  from 
home  ;  forests  were  cleared,  towns  grew  up  and,  later  on,  large  cities ;  trade, 
mostly  in  the  form  of  barter,  was  established  with  the  natives,  who  learned 
to  prize  Russian  cloths,  linens,  hides,  etc. — and,  to  their  destruction,  Russian 
whiskey.  For  a  long  time  furs  were  the  staple  and  almost  only  article  of  Sibe- 
rian export ;  then  came  walrus  tusks,  (that  go  by  the  name  of  "  fish-ivory  ") ; 
it  was  in  the  time  of  Peter  the  Great  that  Siberia's  inexhaustible  wealth  in 
metals,  precious  stones,  and  other  minerals  was  discovered — wherein  lies 
the  chief  value  of  the  immense  dependency  for  the  possession  of  which 
Russia  is  indebted  to  the  simple  heroism  of  the  Cosack  atamhn  Yerm4k 
TimofSyevitch. 


BOOK  IV.     CHAPTER  IV. 

Russia's  Return  to  European  Civilization — Antecedents  of  the  Work  of 
Peter  the  Great — The  Reformer's  Character  and  Way  of  Proceeding — 
Consequences  and  Defects  of  the  Reform — Moral  and  Social  Dualism — 
In  'what  Manner  Autocracy  Seems  to  have  Fulfilled  its  Historical  Task. 

In  this  belated  and  isolated  country  there  arises  one  day  a  man 
who  undertakes  to  bring  it  to  Europe  and  make  it  jump  at  one 
leap  all  the  interval  that  divides  the  two.  Was  it  possible  for 
Russia  to  snatch  at  one  stroke  all  that  ages  had  given  to  her 
rivals  ?  to  get  at  one  pull  to  the  term  of  a  long  road,  the  historical 
stations  of  which  she  had  not  travelled  ?  Was  this  the  conception 
of  a  genius  or  a  chimerical  dream,  an  individual  fancy  doomed  to 
feilure  ?  or  was  it,  in  spite  of  its  daring,  a  plan  suggested  by 
nature,  facts,  and  men  ?  For  a  long  time  Peter  the  Great  was 
regarded  as  one  of  those  lawgivers  after  the  antique  pattern,  who 
fashioned  states  at  their  will,  as  a  sort  of  Deucalion,  the  maker 
of  peoples.  History  in  Russia  has  not,  any  more  than  elsewhere, 
proceeded  by  leaps  and  bounds.  The  Russians  have  been  the 
first  to  feel  this ;  one  of  their  historians'  favorite  tasks  is  to  fill 
the  apparent  chasm  between  ancient  and  new  Russia. 

The  work  of  Peter  the  Great  did  not  lack  historical  ante- 
cedents. In  principle,  if  not  in  form,  it  lay  in  the  logical 
destinies  of  the  Russian  people.  Russia  was  too  near  Europe, 
had  too  much  aflSnity  with  her,  by  blood  and  by  religion, 
not  to  feel  one  day  the  contagion  of  her  civilization.  The  two 
parts  of  Peter's  work — bringing  his  people  nearer  Europe  materi- 
ally, territorially ;  and  morally,  socially,  by  imitation  of  foreign 

282 


HISTORY  AND    THE  ELEMENTS  OF  CIVILIZATION.      283 

customs —had  been  almost  equally  indicated,  attempted,  or 
prepared  by  the  two  preceding  centuries. 

Ever  since  Ivan  III. ,  the  Russian  sovereigns  strove  to  force 
their  way  to  the  north  through  the  rampart  formed  by  the  Swedes, 
the  Teutonic  Order,  and  I^ithuania ;  to  the  south,  through  the 
Tatars,  the  Turks,  and  Poland,  in  order  to  reach  Europe  and 
the  sea. 

In  his  attempts  on  Azof  and  the  Black  Sea,  as  in  his  conquests 
over  the  Baltic,  Peter  did  no  more  than  continue  what  his  prede- 
cessors had  begun  :  his  father  Alexis,  who  had  accepted  the 
submission  of  the  Ukraina  Cosacks  ;  his  sister  Sophia,  who  had 
directed  two  expeditions  against  Crimea. 

Since  Ivan  III.,  also,  most  tsars  had  called  in  foreigners, 
with  a  view  to  introduce  in  their  states  the  arts  and  inventions  of 
the  West.  The  influence  of  European  manners  natiu-ally  made 
itself  felt  first  from  the  nearest  countries — Poland,  I^ittle  Russia, 
Lithuania ;  then  it  came  from  Germany,  Holland,  England, 
Italy,  from  France  at  last,  and  so  from  the  whole  West.  As  early 
as  the  fifteenth  century,  Ivan  III.,  who  was  in  this  respect,  as  in 
so  many  others,  the  precursor  of  Peter  I. ,  entered  into  relations 
with  the  sovereigns  of  Europe  and  asked  them  to  send  him 
physicians,  artists,  and  mechanics.  From  Italy,  at  that  time  the 
teacher  of  Christendom,  Moscow  received  through  Byzance  and 
Germany  architects  and  engineers.  It  was  artists  from  Bologna 
and  Venice  who,  under  Ivan  III.  and  his  successors,  built  the 
handsomest  towers  of  the  Kremlin.  A  noteworthy  thing  is  that, 
instead  of  bringing  along  their  Renaissance  style,  which,  in 
Western  Europe,  they  masterfully  imposed  everywhere,  these 
Italians  took  Russian  models  and  constructed  the  most  dis- 
tinctively Moscovite  edifices  of  Moscow.  This  anomaly  has  an 
instructive  side.  The  queer,  bulb-shaped  cupolas  of  the 
Vassili  church  bear  witness  to  the  condition  of  foreigners  in 
Russia  at  that  time  :  instead  of  imposing  on  the  Russians  their 
own  tastes  and  customs,  they  were  compelled  to  adopt  theirs. 


284       THE  EMPIRE   OF   THE    TSARS  AND   THE  RUSSIANS. 

Along  with  artists,  Ivan  III.  called  in  craftsmen  of  all  sorts — 
founders,  goldsmiths,  miners,  masons,  pyrotechnists.  Thus,  from 
the  first,  the  road  was  traced  for  Peter  the  Great ;  it  was  from  the 
material,  technical,  industrial  side  that  Russia  first  came  in  touch 
with  Europe.  As  Peter  the  Great,  so  Ivan  III.  and  Ivan  IV. 
before  him  are  more  anxious  to  train  their  people  to  mechanical 
arts  than  to  sciences  or  fine  arts.  After  Ivan  III.,  Vassili  IV., 
married  to  a  I^ithuanian,  not  content  with  calling  in  foreigners, 
goes  the  length,  to  please  his  wife,  of  adopting  their  customs  and 
cutting  off  his  beard.  Under  Ivan  IV.,  the  Terrible,  Moscovia, 
through  Arkhangelsk,  enters  into  relations  with  England ;  he  it 
is  who,  despite  the  monks,  introduces  printing  in  Russia.  He 
sends  out  emissaries  to  Europe,  to  collect  skilled  workmen  for 
him  ;  but  the  greater  part  are  detained  on  the  way  by  the  military 
jealousy  of  the  Teutonic  Order,  and  the  commercial  jealousy  of 
the  Hansa  Cities,  which,  in  the  interest  of  German  arms  and  trade, 
attempt  to  place  Russia  under  an  interdict. 

The  period  of  usurpers  endangered  European  influence  by 
giving  it  too  wide  a  scope.  On  the  point  of  lording  it  over  Russia 
with  the  false  Dimitri  or  the  Polish  voyevbds,  the  foreigners  nar- 
rowly escaped  being  driven  out  with  them.  The  Rominofs  seemed 
little  likely  to  favor  Western  civilization.  They  were  carried  to 
the  throne  by  a  national  reaction.  The  first  sovereign  of  their 
house  had  been  brought  up  in  a  convent  by  a  mother  who  had 
taken  the  veil,  and  it  was  his  father  Philaret,  raised  to  the  rank 
of  Patriarch,  who  governed  in  his  name.  This  dynasty,  of  Rus- 
sian blood  and  all  but  sacerdotal  origin,  made  it  their  task  to 
restore  the  old-fashioned  manners.  It  nevertheless  contributed  to 
throw  the  seeds  of  European  culture,  and  with  the  assistance  of 
certain  lyittle- Russians,  trained  in  the  sciences  of  the  West  under 
the  Polish  sovereignty,  founded  in  Moscow,  long  before  the 
majority  of  Peter  the  Great,  a  "  Slavo-Graeco-I^tin  Academy," 
the  name  of  which  sufficiently  indicated  new  aspirations.  Michael 
Romanof  already  sends  abroad  for  merchants,  craftsmen,   even 


HISTORY  AND    THE  ELEMENTS  OF  CIVILIZATION.      285 

soldiers,  and  concludes  commercial  treaties  with  the  West. 
Alexis,  a  genuine  Moscovite  tsar,  clad  in  long  Byzantine  garments, 
which  lend  him  a  likeness  to  the  saints  on  the  eikons,  acts  as  his 
son  Peter's  forerunner.  Under  his  reign  the  foreigners  increase  in 
numbers,  as  though  the  father  had  collected  for  the  son  teachers 
and  materials  of  instruction.  These  Occidentals  occupy  in  Moscow 
a  separate  quarter,  the  ''Slobodd.  of  the  Ni'^mtsy''  (Germans). 
They  are  men  of  all  crafts — skippers,  carpenters,  mostly  Dutch- 
men ;  a  bark  of  theirs,  left  for  useless  on  a  pond,  was  to  arouse  in 
Peter  the  liking  for  marine  things.  Some  are  ofl&cers  and  in- 
structors, as  was  the  future  tsar's  counsellor  Lefort,  from  Geneva. 
Along  with  mechanical  arts,  Alexis  introduced  a  few  accompUsh- 
ments ;  he  had  an  opera  in  Moscow,  in  a  real  theatre  ;  his  daughter 
Sophia  wrote  a  tragedy,  and  had  a  play  of  Moli^re,  translated  by 
herself,  represented  in  the  Kremlin. 

Peter  grew  up  among  these  foreigners.  From  them  he  took 
lessons  in  civilization,  and  also  in  vice,  for  the  German  Slobodit 
teemed  with  drinking  dens  and  places  of  debauchery.  A  Hollander 
was  his  tutor,  a  German  girl  his  mistress  ;  Europeans  of  all  nations 
formed  his  social  circle.  Most  of  them,  even  Lefort  himself,  ap- 
pear to  have  been  men  of  middling  information,  more  capable  of 
exciting  the  young  tsar's  curiosity  than  of  imparting  to  him  vast 
or  profound  knowledge.  Under  his  brother  Theodor  and  the 
regency  of  their  sister  Sophia,  the  foreigners  already  were  numer- 
ous and  played  an  important  part,  but  they  did  not  rise  above 
subaltern  positions.  Under  Peter,  their  pupil,  they  were  to  be- 
come the  instructors  of  the  nation '  ;  under  his  niece  Anne  they 
were  to  be,  for  a  short  while,  its  tyrants.  The  old  tsars  had 
prepared  their  rule  a  long  while  ahead.  Peter  did  not  violently 
alter  the  course  already  steered  by  Russia,  did  not  turn  her  head 
forcibly  away  from  Asia  and  towards  Europe ;  he  only  hastened 

'  Had  there  been  any  geniuses  among  them,  Peter  would  have  been 
more  wary  how  he  trusted  them  :  he  was  not  the  man  to  endanger  or 
share  his  authority,  or  to  let  the  helm  slip  out  of  his  own  hand. 


286      THE  EMPIRE  OF  THE   TSARS  AND   THE  RUSSIANS. 

her  progress  on  a  road  on  which  she  had  entered  of  her  own 
accord.  He  did  not  throw  her  off  the  track  ;  he  only  made  her 
take  a  short  cut,  to  catch  up  with  Europe. 

Tsar  at  the  age  of  ten,*  sole  master  of  the  empire  at  seven- 
teen, Peter  undertakes  to  transform  the  manners  of  a  nation,  of  all 
the  most  devoted  to  its  ancient  customs.  Surrounded  with  for- 
eigners— ^the  Dutchman  Timmermann,  the  Genevese  Lefort,  the 
Scotchman  Gordon,  the  Frenchman  Villebois — he  falls  deeper  and 
deeper  in  love  with  foreign  civilization,  and,  in  I^eibnitz's  graphic 
phrase,  "sets  to  deharbarizing  his  native  land."  Before  he  at- 
tempts to  remodel  his  subjects  after  the  pattern  of  European  ideas, 
he  makes  himself  fully  familiar  with  them.  He  travels  in  the 
West,  and,  the  better  to  become  naturalized  there,  he  lives  the  life 
of  the  people.  He  gives  his  mind  less  to  institutions  than  to 
manners  :  it  is  these  he  is  chiefly  bent  on  importing  into  his  own 
country.  His  genius  is  marred  by  the  faults  of  his  race  and  his 
own  education,  by  his  temperament  and  by  the  possession  of 
autocratic  power.  He  may  play  the  European  ever  so  much,  he 
is  unable  to  ' '  debarbarize  ' '  himself ;  he  continually  offends  that 
same  Western  culture  of  which  he  makes  himself  the  missionary. 
Like  a  child  or  a  savage,  he  at  times  appears  infatuated  with  only 
the  exterior  of  civilization.  In  order  to  polish  the  Moscovite,  he 
shaves  his  beard  and  makes  him  change  his  clothes.  He  does  not 
always  distinguish  between  essentials  and  accessories.  He  at  the 
same  time  creates  a  navy  and  introduces  smoking ;  he  pursues 
with  bitterest  hatred  beards  and  long-skirted  kafthns.  To  certain 
things,  as  for  instance  to  the  navy,  he  gives  undue  importance. 
His  reformer's  zeal  at  times  trenches  on  mania,  his  regulations 
descend  to  pettiness.     He  frequently  is  content  with  appearances, 

'Jointly  with  his  half-brother,  Ivan,  a  frail  and  sickly  youth.  The 
brothers  were  on  aflFectionate  terms,  and  for  his  elder's  sake,  Peter  bore 
with  the  arrogance  of  the  self-appointed  regent,  his  half-sister  Sophia,  who 
had  incited  a  mutiny  of  the  archers  of  the  guard,  and  attempted  his  life 
before  he  was  ten  years  old. 


HISTORY  AND    THE  ELEMENTS  OF  CIVILIZATION.      287 

altering  the  garb  rather  than  the  man,  the  names  rather  than  the 
things ;  he  more  than  once  appears  satisfied  with  a  mere  Western  dis- 
guise. No  matter.  In  his  exaggerations,  the  indefatigable  reformer 
is  more  perspicacious  than  he  seems ;  measures,  puerile  at  first 
sight,  concealed  a  deep-laid  scheme.  It  is  by  the  outside  of  things, 
fashions,  and  exterior  usages,  that  the  Russians  could  most  easily 
be  turned  back  into  Europeans.  The  remainder — the  substance, 
the  essentials — ^^vould  follow :  after  adopting  the  garb  of  Europe, 
his  subjects  would  want  to  adopt  also  her  manners  and  learning. 

What  in  his  travels  particularly  fascinates  Peter,  what  he 
strives  most  earnestly  to  introduce  at  home,  is  every  kind  of 
mechanical  inventions,  crafts,  technical  proceedings.  In  that 
again  there  may  have  been  much  of  the  child  or  the  barbarian, 
who  is  less  impressed  by  theoretical  knowledge  than  by  its  prac- 
tical applications  ;  still,  this  certainly  is  the  most  accessible  side  of 
a  civilization,  and  in  a  country  like  Russia,  it  was  not  only  the 
easiest  but  the  most  useful  to  appropriate.  To  master  the  tech- 
nical part,  Peter  at  Zaandam  becomes  a  journeyman  :  he  wishes 
to  be  not  only  the  foreigner's  pupil  but  his  apprentice.  He  gives 
himself  what  we  would  call  to-day  a  professional  education.  In 
his  first  trip  to  the  West,  his  initiation  trip,  it  is  not  to  the  uni- 
versities, the  academies,  that  he  goes  for  lessons,  but  to  the  ship- 
yard. In  his  second  trip,  even  if  he  does  give  more  attention  to 
arts  and  sciences,  still  he  is  always  guided  by  the  Great-Russian's 
bent  towards  the  positive,  and  by  the  reformer's  practical  sense. 
The  natural  sciences  are  those  that  most  exite  his  interest  : 
anatomy,  surgery,  mechanics,  nautical  sciences,  civil  and  military 
engineering.  He  brings  home  with  him  few  scientists  and  fewer 
artists,  but  is  followed  by  an  army  of  mechanics  and  overseers. 

On  his  return  he  follows  out  the  same  method ;  no  detail  is 
too  mean  for  him,  and  he  is  bent  on  teaching  everything  himself. 
In  the  army,  in  the  navy,  he  takes  pleasure  in  passing  through 
all  the  grades,  acting  drummer  one  day,  pilot  the  next.  First 
of  all  he  teaches  his  people  discipline, — shows  them  how  to  sub- 


288       THE  EMPIRE   OF   THE    TSARS  AND    THE  RUSSIANS. 

mit  to  the  foreigners  whom  he  has  placed  as  instructors  over  them 
as  well  as  over  himself.  In  true  reformer-guise  the  first  lesson 
Peter  gives  is  by  example  ;  of  that  lesson  he  is  lavish.  He  puts 
his  shoulder  to  everything ;  handles  the  laborer's  pick-axe,  nay, 
the  headsman's  axe.  Never  was  man  seen  to  practise  so  many 
different  crafts  at  once.  He  is  the  true  jack-of-all-trades  ;  there  is 
nothing  he  cannot  manufacture  with  his  own  hand  :  boats,  ship- 
models,  pulleys,  all  that  has  anything  to  do  with  marine  things, 
these  latter  being  his  hobby.  He  produces  masterpieces  of  work- 
manship ;  he  also  is  an  artist,  he  can  engrave,  carve.  The  supple 
and  versatile  genius  of  the  Great- Russians  no  less  than  their 
realistic  tendencies  assert  themselves  in  their  emperor  on  a  magni- 
fied scale.  Contrary  to  the  ways  of  closet-reformers,  execution  is 
what  he  has  most  at  heart.  He  takes  hold  of  all  things  with  equal 
ardor,  reforming  the  primer  and  the  calendar  at  the  same  time  as 
the  administration  of  church  and  state  and  the  manners  of  society, 
asking  Leibnitz  for  projects  just  as  he  demands  models  from  his 
craftsmen,  gathering  objects  of  art  and  scientific  collections,  even 
while  he  is  creating  a  navy  and  remodelling  the  army,  endowing 
industry  with  new  fabrications,  agriculture  with  foreign  breeds  of 
cattle,  and,  as  though  he  had  had  time  to  accomplish  nothing, 
leaving  to  the  future  numberless  plans  on  each  and  every  subject 
and  for  all  the  portions  of  his  vast  empire,' 

This  manifold  task  was  in  reality  one,  Peter's  conquests  and 
public  labors  were  the  outcome  of  his  social  reforms,  of  which  the 

■  It  is  said  that  Catherine  11.,  whose  reverence  for  her  great  predecessor 
amounted  almost  to  superstition,  never  took  up  any  project  of  reform  or  of 
a  new  creation,  before  she  had  ordered  a  search  in  the  state  archives  or 
those  of  the  respective  departments,  to  ascertain  whether  Peter  had  not  left 
some  memorandum,  note,  or  directions,  jotted  down  in  his  usual  hasty  but 
clear  and  comprehensive  manner  on  the  particular  matter  in  hand.  The 
search  was  scarcely  ever  in  vain,  and  Catherine  found  support,  encourage- 
ment, and  luminous  guidance  every  time  she  sought  for  them,  leaving  to 
the  world  a  most  touching  and  majestic  instance  of  the  communion,  for  the 
good  of  the  living  and  of  those  to  be  bom,  of  two  great  spirits  across  the 
dividing  gulf  of  death. 


HISTORY  AND   THE  ELEMENTS  OF  CIVILIZATION.      289 

transfer  of  his  capital  was  both  symbol  and  means.  When  he 
built  St.  Petersburgh  and  connected  the  Neva  and  the  Volga  by- 
canals,  he  gave  the  longest  of  Russian  rivers  one  European  mouth, 
and  by  reversing  the  current  of  this  great  central  artery  he  made 
Russia  recoil  on  the  West.  Morally  and  physically,  it  was  the 
same  task  still :  the  emperor  suddenly  brought  back  to  Europe  a 
country  whose  head  had  for  centuries  been  turned  towards  Asia. 

Unfortimately,  man  is  less  easily  bullied  than  nature,  and  Peter 
treated  both  alike.  In  his  passion  for  civilization,  he  inflicts  it ; 
he  goes  about  it  as  much  after  the  fashion  of  a  barbarian  as  of  a 
great  man,  of  a  tyrant  as  of  a  reformer.  His  method  at  times  de- 
feats his  end.  In  the  words  of  a  modem  historian  (Kostom^of ), 
he  employs  Asiatic  proceedings  to  europeanize  his  country.  His 
most  familiar  tools  are  the  knut  and  the  axe,  to  say  nothing  of  thfe 
cudgel  which  he  did  not  spare  to  his  favorites.  He  civilizes  by 
means  of  the  rod. 

Peter's  great  motor,  great  lever,  is  despotism,  autocracy.  He 
neither  corrects  nor  limits,  but  regulates  and  renovates  it.  He 
does  for  autocracy  what  he  has  done  for  himself  and  for  his  people: - 
puts  it  into  European  clothes,  shorter  and  lighter,  so  as  to  give  it 
greater  liberty  of  movements.  To  the  scandal  of  the  Old- Russians, 
the  semi-sacerdotal  robes  of  the  ancient  sovereigns  are  exchanged 
for  a  military  uniform ;  the  biblical  and  patriarchal  designation  of 
Tsar  makes  room  for  the  foreign  and  heathen  title  of  Emperor  * 
"  Public  Weal "  is  Peter's  deity ;  to  this  idol  he  oflFers  up  every- 
thing in  sacrifice — his  health,  his  family,  his  people  ;  for  its  sake 
he  does  not  shrink  from  any  measure,  not  firom  a  renewal  of  the 
sacrifice  of  Abraham.  As  a  true  revolutionist,  he  takes  no  more 
account  of  historical  obstacles  than  of  moral  or  material  ones. 
Sentiment,  tradition,  facts — all  are  equally  powerless  to  arrest 
him ;  he  thinks  himself  strong  enough  to  break  through  every- 
thing. 

♦Whatever  its  etymology.  Oriental  or  Roman,  the  title  of  Tsar'v&  the  one 
usually  employed  in  the  Slavic  Bible:  "  Tsar  Solomon,"  "  Tsar  Herod,"  etc. 

»9 


290      THE  EMPIRE   OF   THE    TSARS  AND    THE  RUSSIANS. 

And  he  was.  But  how  ?  Could  the  energy  of  one  human  will, 
with  impunity,  do  violence  to  nature,  history,  time?  By  no 
means.  The  fact  is,  all  those  barriers  which  Peter  broke  down 
with  so  daring  a  hand  were  in  reality  frail  and  stood  not  high 
from  the  ground  ;  those  traditions  which  he  shook  so  rudely  were 
not  solidly  rooted,  either  in  the  soil  or  in  history;  the  people  which 
he  imdertook  to  turn  up  as  with  a  plough,  having  no  institutions 
of  its  own,  grown  out  of  its  own  soil,  could,  without  too  much 
presumption,  be  treated  as  a  fallow  field,  or  a  tabula  rasa.  With  any 
other  European  nation,  a  reform  so  radical  and  so  sudden  would 
have  been  insensate  ;  in  Russia,  it  struck  less  against  history  and 
nature  than  against  preventions  and  prejudices  partly  come  from 
without ;  opinions  and  habits  which,  although  inveterate,  had  not 
been  of  necessity  imposed  by  either  climate  or  race,  or  by  religion. 
The  outer  side,  the  manners,  the  domestic  fashions  and  usages — 
these  were  the  things  in  which  Peter  encountered  the  most  for- 
bidding obstacles,  and  that  alone  accounts  for  the  fact  that  he 
waged  war  most  passionately  against  external  things :  the  long 
garments  and  beards  of  the  men,  the  veils  of  the  women. 

Peter  the  Great's  undertaking  was  carried  out  by  the  most  de- 
termined genius,  assisted  by  the  most  formidable  array  of  power ; 
that,  however,  was  not  what  made  its  success.  If  his  work  did 
not  die  with  him,  it  was  because  it  lay  in  the  natural  order  of  his 
people's  destinies  ;  it  was  because,  in  the  words  of  Montesquieu, 
"  Peter  I.  was  giving  European  manners  and  customs  to  a  nation 
"which  was  of  Europe."  * 

' '  Scratch  the  Russian  and  you  will  find  the  Tatar  "  is  a  sort 
of  proverb.  It  were  rather  more  historically  correct  to  reverse  the 
saying.  In  shaking  ofi"  the  Mongol  domination,  in  washing  off 
the  stain  of  bondage,  in  dofl&ng  the  garb  and  habits  taken  under 
alien  masters  or  instructors,  the  Russian,  the  Christian  Slav, 
could  not  but  gradually  feel  himself  European  once  more.  In  its 
vital  portions,  Peter's  reform  was  merely  a  moral  throwing  off  of 
*  Esprit  des  Lois,  livre  xix.,  ch.  xiv. 


HISTORY  AND    THE  ELEMENTS  OF  CIVILIZATION.      29 1 

the  Tatar  or  Byzantine  yoke,  a  reclaiming  of  soil  and  climate  from 
the  habits  of  another  race  and  sky,  brought  by  Asiatic  conquerors 
and  Oriental  influences.  There  happened  to  live  in  the  nineteenth 
century  a  sultan  nearly  as  determined  as  Peter  the  Great,  armed 
with  power  as  absolute,  who  used  nearly  the  same  means  in  pursu- 
ance of  a  similar  design.  The  people  he  ruled  also  belonged,  geo- 
graphically, to  Europe  ;  but  what  a  difference  between  a  Turk  and 
a  Russian,  after  both  have  passed  through  the  reforming  process  ! 
The  reason  is  that  Mahmud  was  handicapped  in  his  task  by  all 
those  very  factors  which  had  prepared  the  solution  of  his  task  for 
Peter  :  the  national  spirit,  religion,  the  very  elements  of  civilization. 
Peter  left  no  heirs.  Nevertheless  what  he  had  begun  was  con- 
tinued. Never  was  undertaking  seemingly  so  boimd  to  one  man's 
life — ^yet,  contrary  to  all  calculations,  it  survived  him.  Never 
was  order  of  succession  more  disturbed  ;  never  consistency  more 
impossible  : — four  women,  partly  or  wholly  foreigners,  two  boys, 
two  maniacs — such  were,  in  the  course  of  a  century,  Peter's  suc- 
cessors. At  each  accession — a  barrack  or  bed-chamber  revolution, 
an  overthrowing  of  ministers  and  policy.  Each  new  reign  takes 
its  stand  in  opposition  to  the  preceding  one,  and  the  mighty  of 
yesterday  are  sent  off  to  Siberia  or  the  scaffold.  The  history  of 
Russia  through  the  eighteenth  century  is  one  series  of  alternations 
and  reactions.  It  is  through  a  haphazard  succession  of  conspira- 
cies and  regencies  sprinkled  with  attempts  at  aristocratic  oligarchy, 
in  the  hands  of  governments  at  once  weak  and  violent,  that  Russia 
is  called  upon  to  pursue  the  road  opened  out  to  her  by  Peter  the 
Great.  The  reform  accomplishes  itself  in  the  midst  of  intrigues, 
crimes,  and  debauchery,  by  the  hands  of  adversaries  almost  as 
much  as  of  partisans.  The  capital,  transferred  to  Moscow,  is 
brought  back  to  Petersburgh  ;  the  foreigners,  by  turns  expelled 
and  recalled,  ascend  the  throne  with  Peter  III.  and  Catherine  II. 
In  the  midst  of  their  bickerings,  Peter's  successors  complete  his 
task,  now  correcting  it,  now  overdoing  it,  but  always,  willingly 
or  not,  canying  it  onward. 


292       THE  EMPIRE   OF   THE    TSARS  AND    THE  RUSSIANS. 

To  get  itself  done  by  such  hands,  the  reform  must  needs  have 
been  part  and  parcel  of  Russia's  vocation.  What  singular  guides 
to  civilization,  what  mortifying  instructors  for  a  great  people  ! 
First — a  Livonian  peasant,  who  can  neither  read  nor  write,  assisted 
by  a  former  pastry  vender,  now  prince  and  regent.*  Then  comes 
a  boy  of  twelve,  who  dies  at  fourteen,  succeeded  by  a  coarse 
woman,  who  is  ruled  by  the  son  of  a  Courland  groom,*  and  for  the 
space  of  ten  years,  yields  up  the  empire  to  the  tyranny  of  Ger- 
mans, who  despise  the  Russians  as  an  inferior  race,  yet  do  credit 
to  Russia  by  their  arms,  even  while  they  oppress  her  and  suck  the 
life-blood  out  of  her,  as  the  Spaniards  or  the  Dutchmen  did  with 
both  the  Indies.  Emerging  from  this  foreign  domination,  the 
memory  of  which  has  remained  as  vivid  and  hatefiil  among  the 
people  as  that  of  the  Tatars,  comes  another  child,  an  infant  in 
arms  this  time,  then  again  an  ignorant  and  sensuous  woman,  who 
has  no  policy  but  the  whims  of  her  passions,  or  the  spitefiil 
promptings  of  her  vanity.*  When  at  length  the  crown  comes  to 
a  man  once  more,  Peter  III. ,  he  proves  an  idiotic  brute  and  has 
to  be  deposed.  The  land  of  autocracy  must  wait  half  a  century 
for  a  sovereign  capable  of  ruling  it,  and  when  that  sovereign 
appears,  it  is  a  woman,  a  German,  a  disciple  of  the  French 
philosophers. 

*  Catherine  I.  and  Alexander  M6nshikof.  The  origin  and  earliest  life 
of  Catherine  are  and  always  will  be  wrapped  in  uncertainty.  There  is  no 
doubt,  however,  that  Peter  raised  her  from  a  low  estate  when  he  made  her 
his  companion.  She  gave  him  what  he  most  needed  :  rest  and  cheerful  un- 
ceremonious comradeship,  comprehension  and  sympathy.  In  marrying 
her,  he  not  only  discharged  a  debt  of  gratitude,  but  did  the  best  possible 
thing  for  himself.  She  was  to  the  end  a  good  wife  to  him,  and — what  he 
most  prized  with  his  peculiar  tastes — a  good,  thrifty  A<?»5^-wife.  As  to 
Mdnshikof,  he  was  one  of  Peter's  most  trusty,  zealotis,  and  intelligent  help- 
ers. The  reformer  had  need  of  such  and  took  them  where  he  found  them  ; 
his  marvellous,  instantaneous  insight  into  character  never  stood  him  in 
better  stead. 

*  Anne,  a  niece  of  Peter  the  Great,  and  Biron — a  disgrace  to  humanity, 
a  foul  blot  on  even  the  pernicious  race  of  court  favorites. 

*  Elizabeth,  youngest  daughter  of  Peter  the  Great 


HISTORY  AND    THE  ELEMENTS  OF  CIVILIZATION.      293 

At  home  and  abroad,  Catherine  II.  was  Peter  I.'s  true  succes- 
sor, I^ike  him  unburdened  with  scruples  and  moral  sense,  wholly 
devoid  of  virtue,  and  gifted  with  the  highest  faculties  of  states- 
manship, Catherine  had  over  Peter  the  advantage  of  belonging 
by  birth  to  the  civilization  which  she  strove  to  propagate  among 
her  subjects.  With  her  woman's  hand  the  Tsaritsa,  who  remains 
European  even  in  her  faults,  corrects  and  softens  the  reform 
initiated  by  the  Moscovite  Tsar,  invests  authority  with  more 
humaneness,  lends  more  decency  to  the  court,  to  the  govern- 
ment more  polish  and  dignity,  as  well  as  greater  regularity  to 
the  working  of  the  institutions.  Catherine  herself,  however, 
in  her  mode  of  governing,  is  lacking  in  one  of  the  chief  qual- 
ities of  her  great  model :  unity  of  views,  logical  sequence  in 
action.  With  her  it  is  the  reverse,  especially  during  the  second 
half  of  her  reign,  when  she  is  too  much  inclined  to  neglect 
the  internal  development  of  the  nation  in  favor  of  its  material 
aggrandizement. 

The  work  done  by  Peter  the  Great  triumphed  over  the  in- 
capacity or  the  vices  of  his  successors  as  well  as  over  the  reluctance 
of  his  people.  History  has  witnessed  few  such  successes.  Has 
this  success  been  as  complete  as  has  long  seemed  to  the  West  ? 
In  the  material  order  of  things,  it  has,  marvellously  so  :  army  or 
navy,  administration  or  industry — the  whole  of  modem  Russia 
was  started  by  the  son  of  Alexis.  Some  few  of  his  innovations, 
such  as  his  "  administrative  colleges,"  may  have  been  mistakes  ; 
others,  such  as  his  "Table  of  Ranks"  and  his  bureaucratic 
nobility,  good  perhaps  for  a  period  of  transition,  have  in  time 
become  nuisances.  Such  an  undertaking  was  doomed  to  im- 
perfection, to  ferror  even.  What  it  were  desirable  to  know  is, 
whether,  while  materially  successful  in  his  reform,  Pibtr  Alex^ye- 
vitch  morally  accomplished  his  design.  Has  the  steep  path  up 
which  he  forced  his  country  taken  it  to  Europe  and  civilization 
more  rapidly  than  it  would  have  arrived  there  by  a  more  circui- 
tous and  easier  road  ? 


294       7"^^  EMPIRE   OF   THE    TSARS  AND    THE  RUSSIANS. 

However  hard  on  the  man's  genius  and  the  power  of  his  will 
such  a  verdict  may  be,  the  fact  may  be  doubted.  It  may  be  that 
Russia,  left  to  the  sole  allurements  of  contact  with  Europe,  might 
have,  by  degrees,  become  more  deeply  imbued  with  her  influence, 
opening  out  wider,  because  spontaneously,  to  the  breath  from 
the  West,  taking  from  it  more  discerningly  what  best  suited  her 
temperament.  If  he  did  spare  his  country  a  long  period  of  transi- 
tion and  took  it  at  a  leap  over  one  or  two  centuries  of  uncertain 
gropings,  Peter  could  not  achieve  this  miracle  without  making  his 
people  pay  for  it  dearly.  The  abruptness  of  the  proceeding  en- 
tailed on  Russia  a  fourfold  failing :  a  moral  evil,  an  intellec- 
tual evil,  a  social  evil,  a  political  evil,  came  of  it.  Considered 
from  any  one  of  these  four  points,  the  reform  imposed  by  Peter  the 
Great  produced  sad  results  which  still  have  much  to  do  with  the 
woes  and  uncertainties  of  contemporary  Russia. 

In  his  passion  for  progress  Peter  neglected  one  thing  without 
which  all  others  are  fragile.  He  left  out  morals,  which  may  not 
be  one  of  the  principles  of  civilization,  but  which  no  civilization 
can  with  impunity  dispense  with.  Material  culture  was  what  he 
envied  Europe,  what  he  was  chiefly  bent  on  borrowing  from  her. 
There  was  in  that  something  of  the  Great-Russian's  realistic  spirit, 
the  age  was  also  partly  to  blame.  The  moral  corruptedness  and 
intellectual  anarchy  of  the  eighteenth  century  gave  pernicious 
examples  to  a  semi-barbarous  people,  more  disposed,  after  such 
peoples'  wont,  to  appropriate  the  vices  than  the  qualities  of  their 
foreign  instructors.  Peter  himself,  being  no  longer  a  Moscovite  and 
not  yet  a  European,  having  the  bringing  up  of  neither,  owned  abso- 
lutely no  moral  restraint.  The  brutality  of  his  pleasures,  the  feroc- 
ity of  his  vengeances,  made  of  him  a  singular  apostle  of  progress. 
The  Moscovite  coarseness  combined  with  the  sceptical  license  of 
the  West  found  their  climax,  around  him  and  his  first  successors, 
in  a  cynicism  as  repulsive  to  the  Old-Russians  as  to  Europe. 

The  means  and  the  men  employed  by  Peter  in  his  work  fre- 
quently drew  on  it,  instead  of  sympathy  and  admiration,  the  peo- 


HISTORY  AND    THE  ELEMENTS  OF  CIVILIZATION,      295 

pie's  horror  and  contempt.  How  could  the  latter  love  and  honor 
a  learning  and  civilization  which,  in  Herzen's  words,  were  ten- 
dered to  them  at  the  knuVs  end,  and  that  by  hands  frequently- 
impure  ?  By  the  rigor  of  his  laws,  the  indiscretion  of  his  regu- 
lations, the  cruelty  of  his  punishments,  the  reformer,  busy  princi- 
pally over  external  discipline,  himself  taught  hypocrisy  and  base- 
ness. By  unscrupulously  doing  violence  to  the  public  conscience, 
he  weakened  it ;  while  trying  to  polish,  he  demoralized.  The 
men  he  used  as  instruments  of  reform  made  the  evil  worse.  Peter 
often  took  the  boon  companions  of  his  drinking  bouts  for  associates 
in  his  work  of  reformation.  Germans  and  Kuropeans  from  every 
land, — the  foreigners  who,  during  a  century,  kept  swarming  into 
Russia, — generally  brought  sad  moral  teachings  to  the  people  they 
pretended  to  renovate.  Among  these  missionaries  of  Western 
culture  an  honest  man  was  perhaps  as  rare  a  bird  as  a  great  man. 
The  majority  were  adventurers,  anxious  to  make  a  fortune,  with  no 
other  civilizing  qualification  than  an  immoderate  appetite  for 
power  and  wealth.  The  best  and  most  skilled  still  offended  the 
popular  conscience.  Being  strangers  to  the  people's  customs  and 
beliefs,  they  ran  their  heads  straight  against  prejudices  and  scru- 
ples deserving  of  respect  even  in  their  ignorance.* 

The  eighteenth  century  was  for  Russia  a  school  of  demoraliza- 
tion. The  court  of  St.  Petersburgh  is  a  repulsive  spectacle  even 
in  the  time  of  lyouis  XV.  One  feels  that,  in  that  young  colony  of 
old  Europe,  two  ages  of  corruption  mix  together.  Debauchery, 
venality,  and  bloody  repression — such  are  the  three  stages  or  the 
three  acts,  of  public  life.  A  French  philosopher  who  had  been  the 
guest  of  Catherine  II.  said  of  Russia  as  it  was  then,  that  it  was  a 

*  Haxthausen  {Studien,  vol.  i.,  p.  48)  expresses  the  singular  opinion 
that  the  whole  evil  came  from  having  forsaken  German  culture,  introduced 
by  Peter  the  Great,  for  French  culture,  which  prevailed  from  Elizabeth  on. 
This  is  one  of  those  claims  familiar  to  German  arrogance,  too  naive  to  merit 
discussion.  There  is  only  one  remark  to  be  made  in  reply :  that  in  the  mid- 
dle of  the  eighteenth  century  French  culture  prevailed  everywhere,  not  to 
mention  that  it  was,  of  the  two,  the  more  congenial  to  the  Russian  nature. 


296      THE  EMPIRE  OF   THE    TSARS  AND   THE  RUSSIANS. 

fruit  rotten  before  it  was  ripe.'  If  the  censure  was  merited,  Europe 
was  in  great  part  responsible.  The  Russians  claim  a  high 
standard  for  the  manners  of  Old- Russia.  Without  disputing  the 
West's  primacy  in  matters  intellectual  and  scientific,  they  are  fain 
to  vindicate  for  their  country  and  its  patriarchal  usages  a  moral 
superiority.*  They  flatter  themselves  that,  by  remaining  outside 
of  the  West's  great  historical  epochs,  it  has  escaped  the  threefold 
corruption  of  Middle  Ages,  Renaissance,  and  modem  times.  Pay- 
ing tit  for  tat,  they  take  pleasure  in  alluding  to  the  rottenness  of 
the  West ;  they  say  that  in  the  ancient  empire  of  the  tsars  civili- 
zation had  a  basis  more  moral  and  religious  than  in  the  brilliant 
Western  societies  reared  on  heathenism ;  they  are  prone  to  ascribe 
the  vices  of  new  Russia  to  European  contagion.  The  pictures 
drawn  by  old  travellers  do  not  always  endorse  these  claims,  f  In 
the  North,  as  everywhere,  despotism  and  serfdom  were  a  sorry 
school  for  virtue.  Still  the  traditional  foimdations  of  Moscovite 
morality  certainly  were  shaken  by  the  imperial  reform  and  the 
teachings  from  the  West.  In  a  large  proportion  of  the  nation  the 
old-time  manners  and  beliefs  were  destroyed  before  anything  was 
ready  to  take  their  place.  Here,  perhaps,  lies  another  of  those  re- 
mote springs  of  nihilism  even  in  the  classes  converted  to  civiliza- 
tion. By  his  way  of  casting  to  the  winds  national  traditions, 
institutions,  prejudices,  by  his  unceremoniousness  in  dealing  with 
the  past  of  his  people  and  his  scant  respect  for  his  subject's  cus- 
toms, Peter,  the  most  masterful  of  crowned  revolutionists,  might 
I  be  looked  upon  as  the  true  progenitor  of  modem  nihilism  or 
^^nothingismJ'^ 

^  With  the  usual  amiable  candor  of  honored  and  petted  guests,  of  which 
this  noble  country,  like  our  own,  has  had  some  edifying  experience. 

*  This  opinion  of  the  Slavophils  will  be  found  developed  at  length  in  the 
Histoire  de  la  Civilisation  en  Russia,  from  the  Russian  of  JerebtsdfiF.  It 
crops  up  at  every  step  in  the  writings  of  many  of  Russia's  most  popular 
•writers.     See,  for  example,  A  Writer's  Diary ^  by  Dostoy^fsky,  1880. 

t  Olearius,  Mergeret,  Fletcher,  draw  a  black  picture  of  the  morality 
of  both  laymen  and  clergy.  Others,  it  is  true,  such  as  Herberstein,  give 
accounts  more  favorable  to  Russian  manners. 


HISTORY  AND   THE  ELEMENTS  OF  CIVILIZATION.      297 

To  the  moral  evil  in  Peter  the  Great's  work  was  added  an 
intellectual  evil,  and,  by  a  fatal  concatenation,  this  latter  brought 
in  its  train  social  and  political  evil.     The  mind,  like  the  heart, 

was  forced  off  the  track.     The  reformer  pressed  too  hard  on  certain 

• 

Russian  qualities  almost  imknown  before  his  time  and  soon  to  be, 
thanks  to  him,  carried  to  excess:  the  ease  with  which  the  Russians 
comprehend  and  assimilate  any  and  every  thing.  Or,  what  comes 
to  the  same,  the  reform  emphasized  certain  faults  which  they  held 
from  nature  or  history,  such  as  the  want  of  originality,  insufficient 
personality.  Peter  unconsciously  made  echoes  and  reflections  of 
his  subjects.  Urging  them  violently  along  the  road  of  imitation, 
he  smothered  in  them  the  spirit  of  initiative  and  thus  deprived 
them  of  the  most  active  leaven  of  progress.  By  getting  them  into 
the  habit  of  thinking  with  other  people's  brains,  he  prolonged 
their  intellectual  nonage  under  the  foreigner's  tutelage.  This 
tendenc}'^  to  imitation  delayed  by  a  century  the  birth  of  an  original 
national  literature.  The  Russian  of  St.  Petersburgh  was  subjected 
to  every  influence  from  the  West,  obediently  reproducing  the  most 
contradictory  ones,  going  to  school  by  tmms  to  the  Encyclopedists 
and  the  French  emigrants,  to  Voltaire  and  Joseph  de  Maistre,  and, 
be  it  from  weariness  or  supineness,  too  often  inclining  to  a  hollow 
scepticism,  too  often  carried  away  by  externals  and  appearances.* 
To  these  intellectual  vices  corresponds  the  social  vice, — the 
denationalization  of  one  half  of  the  nation,  the  severing  of  the 
classes.  By  dint  of  copying  the  foreigners,  the  reformed  Russian 
ceased  to  be  a  Russian.  All  that  was  national  went  the  way  of 
the  kafihn  and  the  beard,  the  way  of  the  language  too,  reduced 
to  the  condition  of  a  dialect  left  to  the  "common  people."  Peter, 
so  thoroughly  Russian  in  character,  seemed  to  have  set  himself  the 
task  of  germanizing  his  subjects.     To  the  cities  which  he  founded, 

*  "  Everything  is  always  changing  in  your  country,  Prince,  the  laws  like 
the  ribbons,  the  opinions  like  the  waistcoats,  the  systems  of  all  kinds  like 
the  fashions  ;  a  man  sells  his  house  as  he  sells  his  horse.  Nothing  is  con- 
stant but  inconstancy."  (Letter  from  Jos.  de  Maistre  to  Prince  Kozldfsky, 
1815.) 


298       THE  EMPIRE   OF   THE    TSARS  AND   THE  RUSSIANS, 

to  the  institutions  which  he  created  or  renovated,  he  gave  German 
names,  often  fabricating  useless  barbarisms,  incomprehensible  to 
the  people.  At  one  time,  he  is  said  to  have  been  on  the  point  of 
making  German  the  ofl&cial  language.  Under  his  daughter  Eliza- 
beth it  was  the  French  language's  turn,  and  that  stayed  over  a 
century  as  undisputed  sovereign. 

The  surface  layer,  the  upper  classes  alone,  became  impregnated 
with  the  manners  and  ideas  of  the  West.  The  substratum,  the 
bulk  of  the  people,  remained  impermeable.  As  the  latter  re- 
mained Russians  while  the  former  were  transmuted  into  make- 
believe  Germans  and  Frenchmen,  Russia  split  herself  into  two 
peoples,  severed  by  language  and  habits,  unable  to  understand 
each  other.  The  great  cities  and  lordly  mansions  arose  in  the 
midst  of  the  rural  population  like  foreign  colonies.  As  for  the 
masses,  the  precipitancy  with  which  the  leading  classes  rushed 
westward  rather  delayed  their  progress.  Having  been  left  too  far 
behind  ever  to  join  their  masters,  the  common  people  were  aban- 
doned to  barbarism. 

This  social  evil  crops  up  in  politics.  Unconnected,  unharmo- 
nized,  the  institutions  were  out  of  tune  with  the  country. 
Imported  wholesale  and  with  no  roots  in  the  soil,  they  often  were 
transplanted  before  it  was  made  read}'^  for  them.  While  in  the 
West  the  modem  era  rests  on  the  Middle  Ages  and  each  century 
on  the  preceding  one,  in  Russia  the  entire  political  building,  as 
the  entire  civilization,  had  neither  a  national  basis  nor  historical 
foimdations.  The  whole  government  organization  was  an  append- 
age, to  which  the  people  remained  strangers.  Most  of  the  laws 
were  growths  of  other  climes  :  they  resembled  borrowed  clothes, 
suiting  neither  the  figure  nor  the  habits  of  the  wearer. 

A  contemporary  thinker  *  makes  the  remark  that  one  of  the 
characteristics  of  the  modem  era,  and  one  of  the  evils  the  peo- 
ples of  the  continent  have  most  suffered  from  since  the  eighteenth 
century,  is  too  much  law-making,  too  great  a  confidence  in  the 
*  Mr.  Le  Play,  Social  Reform. 


HISTORY  AND    THE  ELEMENTS  OF  CIVILIZATION.      299 

written  letter,  regarded  as  the  supreme  and  irresistible  vehicle  of 
progress.  Well,  nowhere  has  this  fault  been  carried  to  the  extent 
it  has  reached  in  the  Russia  of  Peter  the  Great  and  his  successors. 
No  other  state  perhaps  has  seen  such  abundant  and  intrepid  legis- 
lating, because  the  legislator  nowhere  else  disposed  of  such  means 
of  action.  The  whole  history  of  Russia,  the  whole  long  Mosco- 
vite  period  in  particular,  apparently  served  only  to  fashion  in  the 
person  of  the  imperial  autocrat  an  omnipotent  lawgiver,  free  to 
do  and  dare  all  things.  The  heirs  of  Peter  and  Catherine  outdo 
one  another  in  raining  ukazes,  believing  all  things  lawful  to  them, 
never  appearing  to  doubt  the  success  or  efl&ciency  of  these  decrees 
so  hastily  issued  and  annulled,  innovating  and  modifying  without 
rest  or  pause,  commanding  and  forbidding,  and  frequently — ^by 
dint  of  variations,  inconsistencies,  contradictions — warping  and 
discrediting  in  the  public  mind  the  very  notion  of  law  itself,  which, 
in  Russia,  appears  as  the  expression  of  an  individual  will,  power- 
ful and  dread,  but  fleeting  and  changeful.  The  people  at  last  are 
reduced  to  a  state  like  that  of  an  inert  patient,  if  not  of  an  unfeel- 
ing corpse,  over  which  the  masters  of  the  empire  bend  in  the 
g^se  of  physicians  performing  dire  experiments  in  anima  vili. 
More  than  that,  the  sovereigns  themselves,  not  of  their  own  will 
but  by  the  force  of  their  everlasting  altering,  remodelhng,  upsetting 
all  that  seemed  settled  and  done  with,  have  taught  their  people  to 
look  on  the  country  as  on  a  tabula  rasa,  or  on  the  stage  of  a  theatre 
the  scenes  of  which  are  shifted  at  the  whistle  of  the  machinist. 

The  Russia  of  Peter  the  Great,  that  of  Catherine  II.  and  of 
Alexander  II.,  afford  the  best  illustration  of  what  written  law  can 
and  what  it  cannot  accomplish.  In  no  other  state  has  law-making 
so  often  shown  at  once  the  extent  and  limit  of  its  power.  In  the 
hands  of  autocracy,  modem  Russia  seems,  once  or  twice  in  a  cen- 
tury, on  the  point  of  being  entirely  transformed  in  the  course  of 
a  few  years,  but  the  most  long-suffering  of  peoples  are  not  to  be 
thus  kneaded  by  their  masters'  knuckles.  To  look  at  the  laws, 
Russia  has  been  more  than  once  upturned  from  the  very  bottom  ; 


300       THE  EMPIRE   OF   THE   TSARS  AND    THE  RUSSIANS. 

but  laws  do  not  reach  a  people's  soul.  To  be  eflScient,  the 
changes  accomplished  in  the  legislation  should  have  a  parallel  in 
the  minds  and  customs.  Otherwise,  no  harmony  existing  between 
law  and  custom,  nothing  comes  of  it  but  disturbance  and  a  gen- 
eral ill-at-ease  feeling,  and  this  is  what,  in  the  course  of  the  last 
two  centuries,  the  Russians  have  too  frequently  experienced. 

Moral  or  intellectual,  social  or  political,  all  the  ills  under 
which  Russia  suffers  ever  since  Peter  the  Great  may  be  summed 
up  in  one :  dualism,  contradiction.  The  nation's  life  and  con- 
sciousness have  been  cleft  in  twain  ;  the  country,  stirred  to  its  core, 
has  not  yet  been  able  to  recover  its  balance.  That  is,  possibly  pn 
a  larger  scale,  the  uncomfortable  feeling  familiar  to  France  since 
the  Revolution.  Whether  they  are  started  from  above  or  from 
below,  these  violent  transformations,  which  become  for  a  people 
the  starting-point  of  a  new  life,  always  leave  behind  them  a  pain- 
ful trail.  There  remain  in  society  and  in  the  public  mind  discords 
which  sway  aside  the  soundest  judgments.  France  had  this 
advantage,  that  her  Revolution  was  made  by  herself,  in  accord- 
ance with  her  own  genius,  and  that,  in  its  errors  as  in  its  successes, 
it  was  wholly  French.  In  Russia  the  revolution  was  made  by  the 
authorities,  under  foreign  influence,  the  schism  between  the  past 
and  present  was  deeper,  the  jar  and  wrench  in  the  nation's  life 
more  painfiil.  To  Peter's  reforms  are  traceable  many  of  the  oppo- 
sitions, or  rather  anomalies,  which,  in  Russia,  caused  contrast  to 
become  law.  Institutions  and  customs,  ideas  and  facts  find  it 
hard  work  to  get  attuned  together.  In  the  nation  as  in  the  indi- 
vidual, dissonances  of  all  kinds  abound.  The  Russian  is  divided 
against  himself,  he  feels  double ;  at  times  he  does  not  know  what 
he  believes,  what  he  thinks,  what  he  is.* 

Being  no  longer  herself,  and  not  feeling  herself  European  yet, 
Russia  is  as  though  suspended  between  two  shores.     In  order  to 

*  "Peter,"  wrote  Joseph  de  Maistre  in  another  letter  to  his  Russian 
firiend, — "Peter  has  placed  you  in  a  false  position  towards  the  other  coun- 
tries :  nee  tecum  possum  vivere,  nee  sine  te  [  "I  can  live  neither  with  nor 
without  you,"] — that  is  your  motto."  (Letter  to  Prince  Kozldfsky,  Oo 
tober,  1815.) 


HISTOR  Y  AND    THE  ELEMENTS  OF  CI VI LIZA  TION.      3OI 

get  out  of  this  duality  from  which  her  sufferings  come,  is  she  to 
lean  wholly  to  one  side  and  rush  forward  on  the  West,  or  to 
recoil  and  resolutely  return  to  old-time  Moscovia?  What  is 
best — ^to  wade  knee-deep  into  imitation,  or,  casting  aside  all  foreign 
importations,  practise  rigorous  self-sequestration,  and  return  to 
all  that  is  national  ?  But  in  the  scantiness  of  the  inheritance  left 
by  the  past,  in  the  midst  of  the  ruins  and  rubbish  accumulated  by 
Peter  and  his  successors,  where  is  "all  that  is  national  "  to  be 
found  most  of  the  time  ?  Russia  is  physically  and  morally  too 
near  to  Europe,  to  which  in  these  last  two  centuries  she  has  drawn 
nearer  still,  to  be  able  to  snap  the  bond.  She  is  European,  but 
her  historical  bringing  up  has  given  her  with  regard  to  the  peo- 
ples of  the  West  certain  dissimilarities  which  one  or  two  centuries 
did  not  sufl&ce  to  obliterate.  The  solution  of  the  problem  of  her 
future  lay  in  the  conciliation  of  these  two  terms :  Russia  and 
Europe,  civilization  and  nationality. 

It  is  with  Peter's  reform  as  with  the  French  Revolution:  we  may 
deplore  their  violences,  we  may  point  out  their  fallacies  ;  not  the 
less  for  that  will  both  remain,  each  for  the  nation  it  has  renovated, 
the  steadfast  basis  of  all  future  moral  development.  Russia's 
task  with  regard  to  her  European  reform  is  the  same  as  France's 
with  regard  to  her  Revolution  :  it  is  no  use  lamenting  and  regret- 
ting. All  there  is  to  do  is  to  carry  on  the  work,  correcting  it  as 
we  go,  but  also  strengthening  and  completing  it,  giving  way  to 
neither  discouragement  nor  precipitancy. 

What  reason  counsels  Russia,  her  own  impulse  leads  her  to 
carry  out  through  inevitable  delays.  The  three  last  reigns  bear 
witness  to  this,  even  though  two  of  them  were  as  barren,  seem- 
ingly, as  the  third  was  fertile.  Open  to  all  generous  illusions,  in 
love  by  turns  with  a  vague  liberalism  and  a  sort  of  authoritative 
mysticism,  Alexander  I.  was  conscious  of  his  people's  discomfort, 
and  dining  many  years  his  dream  was  to  heal  it.  In  him  the 
final  reformer  appeared  to  have  arisen,  the  Messiah  expected 
through  centuries ;  but  he  proved  only  a  precursor.  He  had  it  not 
in  him  to  go  beyond  feeble  flutterings  of  will,  timid  attempts. 


302      THE  EMPIRE  OF   THE    TSARS  AND    THE  RUSSIANS. 

All  the  aspirations  and  contradictions  of  his  time  appeared  to  be 
centred  in  him,  and  his  time  was  one  of  the  most  troubled  in  his- 
tory, and  the  most  fitted  to  trouble  well-meaning  souls. 

In  him  also  came  out  most  clearly  all  the  faculties  and  all  the 
contrasts  characteristic  of  the  modem  Russian,  the  civilized  Rus- 
sian, frequently  at  strife  and  at  odds  with  himself,  such  as  he 
came  out  of  the  reforms  of  the  eighteenth  century,  Like  Peter 
the  Great,  although  in  a  very  different  way,  Alexander  I.,  with 
his  nature  so  weirdly  made  up  of  strength  and  softness,  ' '  of 
manly  qualities  and  feminine  weaknesses ' '  ;  with  his  noble  infat- 
uations and  his  facility  to  become  enamoured  by  turns  of  the  most 
divers  ideas;  with  his  alternations  of  illusion  and  discourage- 
ment, of  action  and  apathy, — this  monarch  of  enigmatic  char- 
acter, so  variously  and  sometimes  so  unjustly  appraised,  might  be 
g^ven  as  one  of  the  historical  types  of  the  national  temperament.* 
The  brilliant,  versatile  son  of  Paul  I. — the  liberal  pupil  of  the 
republican  I^aharpe — ^the  mystic  confidant  of  Madame  de  Krii- 
dener — appears  to  embody  not  merely  an  epoch  and  a  generation, 
but  an  entire  race,  with  its  collective  intellect,  a  race  that  to  this 
day  is  alive  on  the  banks  of  the  Neva. 

As  man  and  as  sovereign,  Nicolas  was  the  direct  opposite  of 
his  brother  and  predecessor.  In  him  the  old  Moscovite  tsars 
appeared  to  revive,  rejuvenated  and  polished  up  after  the  modem 
fashion.  Tall,  well-built,  stem,  indefatigable,  never  doubting 
himself  or  his  system,  Nicolas  was  the  true,  typical  autocrat. 
Distrustftil  of  all  change,  stability  was  his  ideal.  The  revolutions 
in  the  West  scared  him,  and  he  cut  himself  adrift  from  Europe. 
For  nigh  on  a  third  of  a  century  Russia  seemed  to  be  going  back- 
wards ;  but  this  very  reaction  served  as  corrective  to  the  main 
blemish  of  Peter's  reform — denationalization.  The  tyranny  of 
imitation  relaxed,  nationality  began  to  crop  up  ever5rwhere,  and 
first  of  all  it  revived  in  its  proper  place — in  art  and  literature. 

♦  See  the  portrait  of  Alexander  I.  by  Mettemich  {Mhnoires,  etc.,  vol. 
L,  pp.  316,  317). 


HISTORY  AND    THE  ELEMENTS  OF  CIVILIZATION.      303 

Slavophil  theories  notwithstanding,  the  European  influence  did 
not  sufier.  Between  the  West  and  his  subjects  Nicolas  had  raised 
a  Chinese  Wall,  or  rather,  after  the  manner  of  Russian  house- 
keepers at  the  approach  of  winter,  he  had  hermetically  closed  and 
caulked  up  the  windows — carefully  going  over  every  chink 
through  which  the  outer  air  might  thread  its  way  into  the  house. 
But  even  if  the  breath  from  Europe  and  the  pression  of  external 
air  could  not  have  defied  the  custom-house  and  the  imperial  cen- 
sure, the  Russian  atmosphere  was  already  too  impregnated  with 
European  ideas  to  be  capable  of  disinfection.  The  reign  of  Nico- 
las has  shown  that,  with  all  its  omnipotence,  autocracy  was  not 
strong  enough  to  keep  Russia  long  from  rolling  down  the  incline  on 
which  Peter  the  Great  had  started  her.  The  Crimean  War  made 
patent  to  all  eyes,  together  with  the  feebleness  of  the  stationary 
system,  the  necessity  for  Russia  of  placing  herself,  socially,  if 
not  as  yet  politically,  on  one  level  with  the  West,  if  only  to  be 
in  a  condition  to  stand  her  own  against  it. 

Under  Alexander  II.  the  gates  were  thrown  open  and  the  re- 
form came  at  last  that  was  to  reconcile  Russia  with  herself  as  well 
as  with  Europe.  This  time  it  was  not  a  whitewashing  or  a  patch- 
ing up  of  the  fagade-stucco,  or  a  mere  outer  casing  ;  it  was  an 
upheaving  and  a  remodelling  of  the  very  foundations  of  society ; 
it  was  the  whole  people,  not  one  class,  that  was  called  to  liberty 
and  civilization.  Until  the  emancipation  of  the  serfs,  the  work  of 
Peter  I.,  having  left  out  the  bulk  of  the  nation,  lacked  a  basis  ; 
the  emancipation  gave  it  one. 

lyike  Peter's,  Alexander's  reforms  were  worked  from  above,  by 
the  hand  of  autocracy,  but  not  again  were  they  enacted  before  a 
passive,  inert  people,  through  the  agency  of  foreigners  called  in 
from  abroad,  with  the  help  of  rods  and  knui ;  they  were  accom- 
plished with  the  co-operation  and  at  the  demand  of  a  power 
entirely  new  in  Russia — ^public  opinion.  Already  the  chief  motor 
of  Russian  history,  its  main  or  indeed  only  spring,  autocracy,  does 
not  appear  to  be  the  only  factor  of  progress.     It  is  that,  indeed, 


304      THE  EMPIRE   OF   THE    TSARS  AND    THE  RUSSIANS. 

which,  as  in  past  times,  sets  in  motion  the  vast  machinery,  but  the 
impulse  which  formerly  had  no  other  spring  often  now  comes 
from  below.  This  change  is  but  the  prelude  to  another  which 
must  gradually  modify  the  habits  and  traditions  of  the  state. 
Russian  civilization  has,  so  far,  been  fashioned  by  ukazes ;  it 
cannot  be  completed  without  the  participation  of  the  nation.  The 
proceedings  of  Peter  the  Great  and  Catherine  II.  have  served  their 
time  ;  Russia  is  sufficiently  European  now  to  be  associated  to  the 
work.  After  having  compelled  her  to  taste  of  the  arts  and  sciences 
of  the  West,  it  becomes  awkward  to  hinder  her  taking  a  bite  at  its 
liberties  too.  The  reign  of  Alexander  II.,  therefore,  may  be  con- 
sidered as  the  closing  of  a  long  historical  cycle — ^the  cycle  of 
autocratic  reforms. 

By  persisting  in  maintaining  the  absolute  rSgime  in  its  integ- 
rity, autocracy  attempts  to  survive  itself.  By  refusing  to  lend 
itself  to  transformations  that  have  become  unavoidable,  it  only 
risks  to  make  them  more  difl&cult  and  perilous  without  rendering 
them  less  necessary.  From  Ivan  III.  and  Ivan  IV.  to  Peter, 
from  Catherine  to  the  three  Alexanders,  autocratic  power  appears 
to  have  fulfilled  its  historical  mission.  It  has  been  said  that  states 
are  preserved  by  the  same  means  that  made  them.  This  seems 
to  apply  particularly  to  Russia.  By  her  traditions,  by  her  size, 
by  her  social  and  ethnical  composition,  colossal  Russia  manifestly 
needs  a  strong  governing  power  ;  but  it  can  be  strong  without  be- 
ing absolute — Prussia  and  the  German  Kmpire  are  a  proof  of  that. 
After  the  great  economical,  social,  administrative  reforms  of  the 
eighteenth  and  nineteenth  centuries,  the  political  reforms  must 
come  sooner  or  later.  However  complicated,  however  arduous  they 
may  be,  Russia  scarcely  can  put  them  oflf  much  longer.  That 
task  will  be  the  inheritance  of  the  twentieth  century.  May  it  be 
achieved  peaceably,  gradually,  by  the  hand  of  the  tsars  them- 
selves, for  the  happiness  of  the  people  of  the  great  empire  !  * 

*  See,  on  this  weighty  matter,  Vol.  II.,  Book  IV.,  Chaps.  III.  and  IV. 


BOOK     V. 
THE  SOCIAL  HIERARCHY :    THE  TOWNS  AND  URBAN  CLASSES. 


CHAPTER    I. 

Class  Distinctions  in  Russia  :  In  what  Respects  they  are  Superficial  and 
External,  in  what  Deep  and  Persistent — Blow  Struck  at  the  Old-Time 
Social  Hierarchy  by  the  Emancipation — All  Subsequent  Reforms  Tend- 
ing to  the  Lowering  of  Class  Barriers — How,  in  this  Respect,  the  Work 
Done  by  Alexander  II.  Resembles  that  Done  by  the  French  Revolution, 
and  how  it  Differs  Therefrom — Character  and  Origin  of  all  these 
Social  Distinctions — Privileged  and  Non-Privileged  Classes — Lack  of 
Solidarity  between  the  Former ;  Lack  of  Homogeneousness  in  Each — 
Accessory  Classes. 

The  most  salient  fact  presented  to  the  French  observer  by 
Russia's  social  constitution  is  the  division  of  the  population  into  dis- 
tinct groups,  into  classes  neatly  defined, — for  a  long  time  one  might 
almost  have  said  into  castes.  History  and  law  have  divided 
the  Russian  people  into  compartments,  superposed  like  tiers  which, 
from  base  to  summit,  would  go  tapering  off  abruptly.  Russian 
society  thus  looks  from  a  distance  much  like  a  pyramid  in  stages — 
that  of  Saqqarah  on  the  Nile,  or  the  pseudo-Tatar  four-tiers  tower 
in  Kazan,  each  tier  fturther  subdivided  into  secondary  steps.  To 
look  on  the  outside  of  it  only,  this  society,  elaborately  partitioned, 
appears  made  for  people  who,  in  the  classification  of  the  various 
social  layers,  see  the  first  condition  of  a  nation's  greatness.  From 
afar,  with  all  her  denominations  and  oflScial  rubrics,  Russia  would 

seem  to  realize  the  dreams  of  the  utopists  of  hierarchy  ;  one  seems 
20 

305 


306      THE  EMPIRE   OF   THE    TSARS  AND    THE  RUSSIANS, 

to  see  a  vast  Salentum,  where  every  man,  at  his  birth,  finds  his 
place  and  pursuits  marked  out  for  him  by  the  law. 

On  a  nearer  view  it  turns  out  something  quite  different.  At 
the  very  time  when  all  the  demarcations  were  most  precise,  those 
oflBcial  frameworks,  in  which  the  different  classes  are  arranged 
according  to  a  pre-determined  order,  might  possibly  have  misled 
the  theoreticians  enamoured  of  social  distinctions.  How  much 
more  is  it  so  now,  when  such  manifold  reforms  have  rehandled, 
overhauled,  altered  in  a  thousand  ways  the  old  hierarchical  order ! 
Were  Russia's  strength  there,  as  foreigners  so  generally  fancy, 
Russia  would  have  already  lost  the  inner  power  long  attributed  to 
her  by  the  prejudiced  West. 

Russia's  social  constitution,  such  as  it  was,  fashioned  by  the 
two  or  three  last  centuries,  was  based  on  the  servitude  of  the  peas- 
antry ;  the  emancipation  could  not  fail  to  shake  it.  In  this  regu- 
larly stratified  society,  it  was  dijB&cult  for  the  lower  tier  suddenly 
to  straighten  itself  up  without  distturbing  the  balance  of  the 
tiers  it  was  supporting.  The  old-time  classification  into  orders 
still  subsists  before  the  law — nominally,  externally,  of  course  ;  in 
reality  it  is  considerably  honeycombed.  This  progressive  decrease 
of  class  distinctions  and  social  privileges,  indeed,  proves  on  a  closer 
inspection  to  be  one  of  the  main  characteristics  of  contemporary 
Russia. 

If  we  attempt  to  sum  up  into  one  all  the  alterations  that  have 
taken  place  in  our  own  days  in  the  immense  Empire  of  the  North, 
it  will  be  found  that  they  all  culminate  in  this  one  essential  fact :  the 
progressive  abrogation  of  the  differences  existing  between  the 
classes  or  castes,  or,  what  amoimts  to  the  same  thing — in  the  suc- 
cessive reduction  of  both  prerogatives  and  burdens  peculiar  to  each 
of  the  various  classes.  This  is  the  central  point  towards  which 
converge  the  numerous  reforms  of  the  last  reign,  the  climax  from 
which  the  observer  can  best  appreciate  their  order  and  bearing. 

Administrative  or  judicial,  ecclesiastical,  financial,  or  military 
— all  these  alterations,  which  strike  at  all  the  branches  of  public 


SOCIAL  HIERARCHY :    TOWNS  AND   URBAN  CLASSES.      307 

life,  tend  at  bottom,  more  or  less  directly,  more  or  less  consciously, 
towards  one  and  the  same  end — the  lowering  of  caste  barriers,  the 
obliteration  of  old  boundary  lines,  the  widening  of  social  compart- 
ments,— in  one  word,  the  equal  distribution  of  state  favors  and 
state  burdens  among  all  the  parts  of  the  nation.  Whether  or  no 
the  goal  were  distinctly  perceived  by  the  promoters  of  the  reforms, 
whether  they  pursued  it  of  their  own  free  and  clearly  defined  will, 
or  unknowingly  yielded  to  a  secret  and  involuntary  impulse — the 
final  terminus  stands  out  afterwards  with  extraordinary  distinct- 
ness. Whatever  branch  of  administration  one  may  take  up  to  study, 
courts  of  justice,  army,  taxation,  municipal  or  provincial  institu- 
tions— the  same  tendency  will  invariably  assert  itself.  Therein, 
we  repeat,  lies  the  bond  which  links  all  the  late  reforms  together, 
and  which,  notwithstanding  serious  breaks  and  gaps,  and  singular 
inconsistencies,  lends  them  that  which  is  the  stamp  of  great 
things — unity. 

There  certainly  are  incoherences,  restrictions,  contradictions, 
shortcomings  of  all  sorts ;  within  the  last  few  years  especially 
there  have  been  many  waverings,  side-starts  in  the  direction  of 
reaction,  attempts  at  backing  out ;  the  fact  is  not  the  less  there. 
In  the  Russia  of  Peter  the  Great  and  his  successors,  all  the  rights, 
all  the  immunities— administrative,  judicial,  mihtary — ^were  be- 
stowed on  each  class  separately ;  it  is  the  other  way  now ;  the 
democratic  proceeding  prevails,  which  deals  with  a  people  and 
wots  not  of  classes.  In  the  midst  of  the  nineteenth  century 
Russia  still  clung,  in  this  respect,  to  mediaeval  views  and  ways  ; 
under  Alexander  II,  she  became  a  modern  country.  In  this 
respect  the  work,  as  yet  incomplete,  of  the  lyiberator,  bears  a 
striking  resemblance  to  that  of  the  French  Revolution ;  its  final 
terminus  is  civil  equality,  without  distinction  of  classes,  races, 
religions. 

There  are,  however,  important  differences  between  the  two,  in 
the  manner  in  which  each  was  prepared,  and  in  the  manner  in 
which  each  was  carried  out.     In  the  France  of  the  ancien  rigime 


308      THE  EMPIRE  OF   THE   TSARS  AND    THE  RUSSIANS. 

the  moral  barriers  between  the  different  classes,  especially  between 
the  nobility  and  the  middle  class  (noblesse  and  tiers-Siat),  had 
been  overthrown  and  obliterated  by  custom  before  they  were  abol- 
ished by  law.  The  distance  between  noble  and  burgher,  still  so 
impassable  in  the  seventeenth  century,  had  been  bridged  over  in  the 
eighteenth.  Salons  and  belles-lettres — the  drawing-room  and  the 
study — had  brought  the  two  together,  frequently  even  merged 
them  into  one.  The  only  distinction  now  lay  in  the  outer  man, 
the  costume,  and  on  the  day  on  which  the  noble  laid  aside  sword 
and  embroideries  the  last  difference  vanished.  Uniformity  of 
garb  and  manner  betokened  spiritual  similarity.  As  a  living 
historian  remarks,  equality  de  facto  had  preceded  equality  de 
jure;  noblesse  and  tiers-itat  were  placed  on  a  par  by  education  and 
mental  capacity,  even  while  still  separated  by  privileges.*  Not 
so  in  Russia,  even  on  the  eve  of  the  latest  reforms.  The  noble, 
the  priest,  the  townsman,  the  peasant,  were  severed  not  merely 
by  legal  privileges,  but  by  habits,  bringing  up,  even  natural 
inclination ;  they  were  so  many  different  men,  and  in  order  to 
make  them  alike  it  was  not  enough  that  the  law  should  place  them 
on  an  equal  footing.  The  classes  not  having  been  brought  together 
by  manners  before  they  were  so  by  law,  the  taking  down  of  the 
legal  fences  which  kept  them  apart  did  not  suffice  to  bring  about 
a  fusion  ;  it  is  only  with  time  and  indirectly  that  the  great  results 
of  the  social  reforms  will  unfold  themselves. 

Between  the  French  Revolution  and  the  imperial  reforms 
there  is  another  difference,  an  opposition  in  the  midst  of  re- 
semblances. For  reforms  made  by  monarchs  and  those  made 
by  popular  revolutions  cannot,  even  when  tending  the  same  way, 
be  accomplished  in  the  same  manner  ;  the  former  do  not  proceed 
after  the  violent,  abrupt,  uncompromising  fashion  natural  to  the 
latter.  While  the  revolutions  started  from  below  aim  first  of  all 
at  the  outer  shell  of  things  and  bear  a  grudge  against  names  as 
much  as  against  substance,  reforms  from  above  are  often  inclined 

*  Taine  :  Les  Origines  de  la  France  Contemporaine  :  PAncien  Rigime. 


SOCIAL  HIERARCHY :    TOWNS  AND    URBAN  CLASSES.      309 

to  respect  the  shell,  content  in  proportion  as  the  innovations  are 
less  apparent.  The  class  distinctions  have  not  been  abolished  in 
Russia,  the  forms  and  moulds  are  still  untouched.  Instead  of 
dropping  them  as  empty  shells  and  taking  them  down  as  useless 
scaffoldings,  the  lawgiver  has  kept  them  all.  The  lovers  of  the 
past  are  thus  left  free  to  dream  of  some  day  forcing  back  into  them 
the  various  classes  of  the  nation,  of  reconstructing  the  social 
order  on  the  old  lines  with  some  slight  modifications. 

These  distinctions,  it  should  be  remembered,  have,  in  history 
and  manners,  roots  too  deep  to  be  eradicated  in  a  few  years.  There 
are  still  reasons  for  their  existing  in  Russia  which  in  Western 
Europe  have  vanished  long  ago,  or  never  existed  at  all.  One  is 
the  exotic  manner  of  the  introduction  of  modern  civilization  and, 
as  a  consequence,  the  enormous,  the  incalculable  difference  in 
manners  and  culture ;  another  is  the  double  system  of  land  tenure, 
inalienable  and  held  in  common  by  the  recently  emancipated 
peasants,  individual  and  hereditary  for  the  former  serf-owner. 

lyCgislation  and  society  itself  are,  with  regard  to  this  matter,  in 
a  state  of  transition ;  a  study  of  the  different  classes  is  all  the 
more  arduous  and  complicated.  It  is  often  difficult  for  a  foreigner 
to  find  out  what  has  been  abrogated  by  the  recent  reforms,  and 
what  has  not,  to  distinguish  nominal  rights  and  privileges  from 
real  ones.  Yet  nothing  is  of  greater  importance  for  the  discrimina- 
tion of  facts  from  appearances.  Outwardly,  this  society,  the  best 
framed,  most  neatly  partitioned  and  pigeonholed,  seems  to  be  one 
of  the  most  aristocratic  in  Europe.  Virtually  there  is  none  more 
democratic.  Here  again,  there  is,  between  show  and  reality,  one 
of  those  contrasts  so  familiar  to  Russia  and  so  bewildering 
to  strangers. 

*'  In  our  country,"  one  of  the  principal  compilers  of  the  Eman- 
cipation Act,  Prince  {kniaz)  V.  Tcherkassky,  once  said  to  me 
"  the  distinctions  of  classes  have  never  existed  but  on  the  sur- 
face. From  the  Varangians  of  Rurik  to  Peter  the  Great  and 
Catherine  II.,  the  nobility  has  been  only  a  thin  and  superficial 


3IO      THE  EMPIRE   OF    THE    TSARS  AND    THE  RUSSIANS. 

alluvion.  On  scratching  the  soil  you  find  the  old  Slavic  hard-pan 
smooth  and  even." 

A  foreigner,  therefore,  must  not  be  beyond  measure  astonished 
if,  contrary  to  the  evidence  of  his  own  eyes,  he  hears  Russians  as- 
sert that  there  are  no  class-distinctions  in  Russia,  that  every  kind 
of  hierarchy  has  always  been  repugnant  to  the  Russian  nature. 
This  assertion,  first  made  by  the  Slavophil  school,  is  joined  in  by 
all  the  Slavic  nations,  with  the  exception  of  the  Poles,  who,  in  this 
respect,  as  in  many  others,  are  different  from  their  race-brethren. 
Fundamental  unity  of  the  people,  social  homogeneousness,  is  given 
out  as  the  distinctive  feature  of  the  Slavic  genius,  as  the  charac- 
teristic of  their  civilization  and  the  main  condition  of  their  future 
development. 

In  Russia  the  individual  does  not,  as  in  France,  stand  isolated 
before  the  state.  Each  man  is  classed  in  the  administrative 
nomenclature  under  some  rubric  ;  each  belongs,  by  birth  or  pro- 
fession, to  a  given  group,  of  which  he  shares  the  rights  and  obli- 
gations. The  law  distinguishes  between  the  noble,  the  priest,  the 
peasant,  the  townsman.  Until  the  last  few  years,  every  one  held  a 
different  position  as  regards  taxation,  the  administration  of  justice, 
and  military  service.  Each  order  had  its  own  organization,  its 
co-operation  forms,  its  assemblies  and  elective  officers,  sometimes 
its  own  judges  and  courts ;  each  assumed  guardianship  over  those 
of  its  members  who  were  under  age,  and  at  times  was  held  respon- 
sible for  its  grown-up  members.  These  charges  or  immunities,  as 
well  as  this  internal  self-government,  in  many  cases  still  subsist ; 
but  the  various  classes  are  no  longer  kept  apart. 

The  government  of  the  Emperor  Alexander  II.,  in  endowing 
Russia  with  provincial  assemblies,  has  for  the  first  time  called  on 
the  different  orders  of  the  nation  to  deliberate  in  common  ;  but 
such  is  still  the  distance  between  them  that,  in  the  common  sit- 
tings of  these  assemblies,  pointedly  entitled  ' '  of  all  classes, ' '  each 
class  usually  has  its  separate  representatives,  elected  in  private 
partial  gatherings.     While  introducing  self-government  into  local 


SOCIAL   HIERARCHY :    TOWNS  AND    URBAN  CLASSES.      31I 

admiuistration,  Russia  appears  to  be  wavering  between  the  system 
which  gives  to  each  group  of  the  population  special  representatives, 
and  that  of  mixing  all  the  inhabitants  up  together  in  one  common 
representation.  The  former  method,  but  lately  in  general  use, 
prevails  in  the  provincial  councils,  in  the  zSmstvo,  the  most  impor- 
tant of  deliberative  assemblies  in  contemporary  Russia  ;  the  latter 
has  recently  been  applied  to  the  municipal  town-councils  as  well  as 
the  jury.  Which  of  the  two  systems  will  j5nally  triumph  ?  Which 
will  be  preferred  on  the  day  on  which  the  empire  will  receive  a 
political  constitution  ?  Will  the  nobility,  the  towns,  and  the 
peasants  have  separate  representatives,  separately  elected,  and 
deliberating  in  common  ?  Or  will  one  of  the  orders — the  nobility, 
for  instance,  with  or  without  the  clergy — have  a  separate  house, 
as  in  England  ?  There  lies,  concerning  the  future  of  Russia,  a  ques- 
tion not  unlike  that  which  had  to  be  met  at  the  outset  of  the  French 
Revolution,  at  the  time  of  the  convocation  of  the  States-General — 
a  ticklish  question,  which  no  one  could  solve  without  first  becom- 
ing familiar  with  the  social  organization  of  former  times,  and  with- 
out having  gauged  the  value  and  real  force  of  each  of  the  great 
groups  which,  together,  constitute  the  nation. 

A  whole  volume  of  the  bulky  Russian  Code  is  devoted  to 
"classes,  orders,  or  conditions."  The  Code  contains  no  less  than 
sixteen  hundred  articles  on  this  diflScult  matter,  and  numerous 
amendments  and  appendices  continually  increase  its  complexity. 
The  law  recognizes  in  Russia  four  principal  classes :  the  nobility, 
the  clergy,  the  inhabitants  of  the  towns  and  cities,  the  rural  popu- 
lation. This  division  is  the  natural  outcome  of  the  country's 
history — indeed  of  the  social  state  of  all  primitive  peoples.  From 
India  to  Scandinavia,  everywhere  almost,  at  a  certain  stage  of 
civilization,  these  four  fundamental  orders  are  found,  the  two 
latter  either  separated,  as  in  Sweden,  or  united  under  one  name 
as  in  France,  without  being  really  one  in  fact ;  the  warriors  or 
nobles  at  the  top,  together  with  the  priests  or  clergy  ;  lower  down 
the  men  of  trade  and  crafts,  the  burghers  {bourgeoisie)  ;   quite 


312       THE  EMPIRE   OF   THE    TSARS  AND    THE  RUSSIANS. 

below,  the  peasant  or  rustic,  the  husbandman,  tiller  of  the  earth. 
This  similarity  in  classification  and  hierarchy  does  not  imply  per- 
fect identity  everywhere.  Though  the  social  groups  in  Russia 
may  bear  in  French  and  German  the  same  names  as  the  classes 
of  feudal  Europe — ^in  Sweden's  old  constitution,  for  instance, — they 
do  not  differ  the  less  deeply  from  their  foreign  homonyms,  and  it 
would  be  rushing  into  serious  blunders  to  judge  them  one  by  the 
others. 

In  Western  Europe,  whatever  may  be  the  actual  social  condi- 
tion of  the  different  nations — in  Spain  or  in  Germany,  in  Italy  or 
Belgium, — the  words  ' '  nobility, "  "  burgherdom, "  "  peasantry, ' ' 
have  at  bottom  the  same  meanings ;  they  convey  to  the  mind 
analogous  notions,  because  the  classes  designated  by  these  terms 
were  bom  in  the  same  age,  under  the  same  influences,  at  an  epoch 
when  all  Europe,  I^atin  or  Teutonic,  had  institutions  nearly 
identical.  Russia,  in  common  with  most  Slavic  peoples,  was  not 
then  a  part  of  the  European  community,  and  therefore  the  same 
names  cannot  possibly  have  there  the  same  meanings.  These 
terms,  "nobles,"  "burghers,"  we  use  in  speaking  of  Russia  only 
fi-om  the  lack  of  more  fitting  ones,  and  in  order  not  always  to  utter 
sounds  unfamiliar  to  the  European  ear.  This  Russian  hierarchy, 
with  all  its  class  denominations,  was  indeed  also  bom  in  the 
Middle  Ages — but  in  Middle  Ages  of  her  own,  different  from  the 
same  period  in  Western  Europe.  By  their  origin,  by  the  spirit 
of  their  kind  and  their  historical  rdle,  the  Russian  noble  (dvorianln) 
and  burgher  {ntiish-tchantn)  are  probably  still  further  removed 
from  their  European  equivalents  than  the  Greek  clergy  fi-om  the 
Latin,  the  Orthodox  married  priest  (^pop)  from  the  Catholic  priest 
vowed  to  celibacy.  Between  the  two,  there  is  scarcely  as  much 
as  a  family  likeness. 

As  all  things  in  Russia,  the  constitution  of  the  four  principal 
classes  of  society  in  their  modem  form  dates  from  Peter  the 
Great,  and,  after  him,  from  the  great  Catherine.  It  was  Peter  who, 
in  establishing  the  ofi&cial  hierarchy  of  ranks  according  to  the 


SOCIAL  HIERARCHY :    TOWNS  AND    URBAN  CLASSES.      313 

degree  or  pursuit  of  each  person,  definitely  gave  its  national  char- 
acter to  the  Russian  dvorihnstvo,  the  class  entitled  "nobility  "  in 
the  other  languages.  It  was  Catherine  who,  under  the  influence 
of  Western  models,  erected  this  nobility,  as  well  as  the  class  of 
townspeople  (so-called  bourgeoisie),  into  corporations,  endowed 
with  certain  privileges.  In  the  society  regulated  by  Peter  each 
citizen  seemed  to  have  his  place  marked  by  the  law,  each  class  its 
well-defined  sphere  of  action,  its  specialty,  so  to  speak.  For  all 
classes  or  social  categories,  the  nobility,  as  well  as  the  rest,  corre- 
sponded at  bottom  to  a  determined  occupation,  and  answered  to 
common  charges  and  obligations,  not  to  exemptions  and  privileges. 
To  the  peasant  fell  the  working  of  the  land ;  to  the  townsman, 
trade  and  crafts ;  to  the  noble,  public  service ;  to  the  priest,  the 
altar.  Each  wheel,  each  attachment  had  its  work  marked  out  in 
the  service  of  the  state,  and  none  might  shirk  it.  These  classes, 
so  precisely  outlined,  between  whom  custom  and  training  even 
yet  draw  a  harsher  line  than  does  the  law,  were,  nevertheless,  no 
closed  castes.  The  very  nature  of  the  governing  power,  whose 
handiwork  they  were,  could  not  allow  them  to  shut  themselves  up 
within  themselves.  Superior  as  well  as  inferior  classes  existed 
only  for  the  convenience  of  Throne  and  State,  not  in  or  for  them- 
selves, and  the  sovereign  was  always  free  to  raise  or  lower  his 
subjects,  in  accordance  with  his  needs  or  views,  from  one  category 
to  another. 

In  such  a  society,  where  no  class  held  any  rights  or  preroga- 
tives on  their  own  merits  or  their  ancestors',  or  in  virtue  of  a 
national  tradition,  none  could  have  anj^  rights  that  the  governing 
power  need  consider.  All  remained  alike  dependent  on  the 
pleasure  of  him  from  whom  they  had  received  their  prerogatives. 
There  was  in  these  classes,  especially  in  the  nobility  and  burgher- 
dom,  no  living  organism  instinct  with  a  principle  of  spontaneous 
action  ;  nothing  but  an  inert  mechanism,  obedient  to  the  directing 
hand.  Russia's  example  shows  that  hierarchy  and  class  limita- 
tions are  not  always  safe  pledges  for  a  people's  freedom.    It  is  easy 


314      THE   EMPIRE   OF   THE    TSARS  AND    THE  RUSSIANS. 

to  lament  the  crumbling  of  social  forces  in  countries  where  the 
individuals,  in  their  theoretical  equality  before  the  state,  are 
at  once  merged  together  and  isolated,  like  the  grains  of  sand  in  a 
beach.  This  evil,  however  great,  is  difl&cult  to  remedy  artificially. 
To  give  social  groups  cohesion  and  unity  it  needs  something  more 
than  taking  individuals  and  agglomerating  them  into  corporations, 
orders,  classes.  From  a  political  point  of  view,  nothing  has  real 
consistency  except  the  spontaneous  products  of  nature  and  history, 
the  bodies  which  have  formed  and  become  cemented  organically, 
that  have  within  and  not  outside  of  themselves  the  principle  of 
their  life  and  power. 

In  Russia  no  class  possesses  political  rights  of  any  sort ;  each 
insures  to  its  members  personal  rights  and  privileges  which  it 
holds  from  the  law  and  the  sovereign's  pleasure.  In  this  respect 
Russian  society  is  divided — or  rather  was,  for  the  late  reforms 
have  gradually  wellnigh  obhterated  the  distinction — into  two 
main  groups,  the  privileged  classes  and  the  non-privileged.  The 
former  were  exempt  from  military  service,  from  the  heaviest  of 
direct  taxes — the  poll  tax — and  from  corporal  punishment — the 
knut  and  the  rods.  As  everywhere,  these  privileged  ones  were 
the  nobility  and  clergy,  to  whom  were  added  the  selectest  of  the 
townsmen  and  tradespeople,  what  would  be  called  in  French,  ''la 
grosse  bourgeoisie, ' '  the  big- wigs  of  the  middle  class.  The  rest  of 
the  townsmen — the  small  fry  among  tradespeople  and  mechanics 
— ^were,  like  the  serfs,  subject  to  conscription,  capitation,  and  the 
rods.  Thus  the  rural  and  urban  pieds  formed  one  great  rightless 
mass,  which  from  times  immemorial  went  tmder  the  graphic 
appellations  of  smerd  ("the  stinking")  and  tchem  ("  the  dirty  "). 

But  even  amidst  the  privileged  classes  there  was  not  by  any 
means  the  unity  of  spirit,  the  uniformity  of  culture — in  a  word, 
the  moral  homogeneousness,  which  was  found  in  other  countries 
under  similar  conditions.  Between  the  nobility  and  clergy  there 
was  nothing  like  the  tmion  or  solidarity,  there  were  none  of  the 
manifold  ties,  of  family  and  interests,  which,  in  old-time  France, 


SOCIAL  HIERARCHY :    TOWNS  AND    URBAN  CLASSES.      315 

made  one  of  the  two  first  orders  of  the  state.  Even  before  Peter 
the  Great  the  high  church  dignitaries  had  fallen  into  disfavor 
with  the  nobility.  Already  the  clergy,  condemned  to  recruit 
itself  out  of  its  own  ranks,  had  become  a  sort  of  hereditary  caste; 
not  that  it  was  closed  by  law  against  outsiders,  but  because  the 
sons  of  priests  were  almost  the  only  candidates.  Since  Peter  the 
Great,  the  clergy,  confined  to  its  church  duties,  and  long 
suspected  of  ill-will  towards  the  innovations,'  had  remained, 
like  the  bulk  of  the  people,  true  to  the  old  customs, 
usages,  ways — to  Old- Russia.  The  nobility,  on  the  contrary, 
recruited  from  among  foreigners  of  many  lands,  favorites  of  the 
sovereign  and  adventurers  of  all  sorts,  had,  after  a  short  resist- 
ance, opened  its  door  to  the  breath  from  Europe  ;  it  was  the  only 
class  that  adopted  the  garb,  the  mode  of  life,  the  ideas  of  the 
West.  This  nobility,  composed  of  serf-owners,  mostly  state 
functionaries,  and  the  privileged  portion  of  the  urban  population, 
had  not  much  more  in  common  in  the  way  of  interests  or  senti- 
ment, for  the  tradespeople  and  "  townsmen  "  generally  are  less  far 
removed  from  the  people  in  tastes  or  bringing  up  in  Russia  than 
in  any  other  country. 

One  of  the  peculiarities  of  this  social  constitution  is  that  each 
of  the  four  classes  is  divided  into  sub-classes,  generally  strangers, 
frequently  quite  hostile  towards  one  another.  The  dualism  which 
pervades  the  clergy,  divided  into  priesthood  and  monkhood — white 
and  black  clergy, — shows  up  to  a  certain  degree  in  all  the  classes 
of  society.  In  the  nobility  there  are  the  personal  and  the  heredi- 
tary nobles  ;  among  the  townsmen  there  are  the  "  notables"  on 
one  side,  the  mechanics  and  ' '  small  people ' '  on  the  other  ;  even 
the  peasantry  is  divided  into  peasants  attached  to  private  land- 
lords and  peasants  of  the  Crown  demesnes. 

'Not  "suspected" — convicted.  At  the  head  and  at  the  root  of  all 
opposition,  the  inspirers  and  instigators  of  rebellious  discontent,  the  hidden 
soul  of  ever  reviving  conspiracy,  in  the  van  of  open  resistance,  lurking  in 
the  gloom  of  church  and  convent  cell,  ear  to  lip  with  fair  penitents  and 
callow  youths,  inciting  to  riot,  treason — and  murder. 


31 6      THE  EMPIRE  OF  THE    TSARS  AND   THE  RUSSIANS. 

The  complexity  of  this  social  order  does  not  stop  there.  Out- 
side of  these  four  great  frames,  further  cut  up  by  inner  partitions, 
there  are  smaller  compartments,  accessory  or  secondary,  some 
being  remnants  of  an  earlier  organization,  others  destined  for  the 
use  of  the  inhabitants  of  countries  more  or  less  recently  annexed, 
and  fitting  but  awkwardly  into  the  older  frames.  Up  to  the  time 
of  the  reforms  of  Alexander  II.,  the  army,  no  less  than  the  clergy, 
could  be  regarded  as  a  class  by  itself.  In  Russian  statistics  the 
soldiers,  their  wives  and  children,  figured  in  the  midst  of  the 
social  nomenclature  under  a  special  rubric*  This  was  a  conse- 
quence of  the  long  term  of  military  service  ;  when  a  man  knew 
that  he  was  to  remain  in  his  regiment  twenty  or  twenty-five  years 
he  entered  the  army  very  much  as  one  enters  the  church — for 
life.f  Once  enrolled,  the  peasant  ceased  to  belong  to  his  native 
commune  ;  once  shaved,  he  never  again  donned  the  garb  of  his 
younger  days.  As  a  rule,  when  age  shelved  him  as  to  active  ser- 
vice, he  would  continue,  in  the  humble  functions  that  were  gener- 
ally awarded  him,  or  in  the  places  where  he  appealed  to  public 
charity,  to  wear  the  military  tunic.  It  is  only  since  1872  and 
1874,  i.  e.,  since  the  reduction  of  the  term  of  service,  that  the 
recruit  is  no  longer  severed  from  his  class  and  commune  by  the 
call  under  the  flag. 

In  the  first  half  of  the  present  century,  under  Alexander  I., 
there  was  a  moment  when,  owing  to  the  military  colonies  invented 
by  Count  Araktch^yef,  the  profession  of  arms  seemed  on  the  point 
of  becoming  a  livelong  and  hereditary  one.  In  certain  districts, 
the  inhabitants  of  which  were  dubbed  "soldier-husbandmen,"  the 
girls  were,  equally  with  the  boys,  devoted  to  the  army,  destined 

♦These  statistics,  blundered  over  by  the  West,  have  sometimes  led  to 
singular  mistakes.  Thus  the  figure  of  the  class  would  be  given  as  that  of 
the  army,  regardless  of  the  fact  that  this  figure,  in  the  case  of  the  Cosacks, 
represented  for  over  half  its  value  women  and  children. 

t  The  long-term  service  was  partly  a  consequence  of  the  social  organiza- 
tion ;  frequent  levies  and  large  contingents  would  have  ruined  the  land- 
lords by  robbing  them  of  their  serfs,  who,  once  entered  on  the  army  roUSr 
were  ipso  facto  manumitted. 


SOCIAL  HIERARCHY:    TOWNS  AND    URBAN  CLASSES.      317 

at  their  birth  to  marry  and  bear  soldiers.  It  was  a  novel  sort  of 
serfdom,  the  promoters  of  which  flattered  themselves  that  they 
would  draw  great  profit  therefrom,  both  for  the  forces  and  finances 
of  the  empire.  The  resistance  of  the  peasants,  which  sometimes 
reached  actual  revolt,  compelled  Nicolas  to  give  up  this  attempt. 
Alexander  II. ,  in  this  respect,  followed  tendencies  directly  opposed 
to  those  which  prevailed  imder  Alexander  I.  The  law  which 
abridged  the  term  of  military  service  at  the  same  time  that  it 
rendered  it  obligatory  to  all,  struck  another  hard  blow  at  class 
distinctions.  Instead  of  being  an  isolated  body,  a  recipient  of 
privileges,  or  a  bond  slave,  the  army  will  become  a  levelling  agent, 
one  of  the  principal  factors  in  the  fusion  of  classes  and  ranks.* 
—  There  is  in  the  Russian  army,  or  rather  military  forces,  an  im- 
portant element  which  continues  to  form,  to  a  certain  extent,  a  dis- 
tinct class,  a  warrior  caste  ;  it  is  the  Cosacks.  Along  the  southern 
frontier  of  the  empire,  along  the  lower  course  of  the  Don,  the 
Volga,  the  Ural,  the  Kub^n,  the  T6rek,  there  are  still  foimd 
populations  of  mixed  origin,  all  equally  subject  to  a  military 
organization.  This  is  the  only  resemblance  the  Cosacks  bear 
to  Alexander  I.'s  soldier  colonies  or  the  old-time  Granitch^s 
("Military  Confines")  of  Austria.  In  compensation  for  the 
special  burdens  imposed  on  them,  they  have  from  the  oldest 
times  enjoyed  immunities  which  they  always  valued  very  highly  ; 
hence  they  were  regarded  as  privileged  bodies,  although  their 
individual  and  corporative  privileges  were  greatly  curtailed  in  the 
course  of  the  centuries.  Abroad  the  name  of  * '  Cosack, ' '  associated 
with  memories  of  invasion,  awakens  the  ideas  of  barbarity  and 
plunder ;  at  home,  the  same  name,  associated  with  memories  of 
the  unfettered  life  of  the  steppe,  recalls  the  ideas  of  liberty  and 
equality.  "Free  as  a  Cosack"  is  to  the  Russian  a  deeply  sig- 
nificant saying,  for  it  designates  the  man  who  has  never  borne 

*  Obligatory  military  service,  mitigated  by  certain  provisions,  was 
instituted  in  1874.  The  term  of  service  is,  since  1888,  five  years  in  the 
active  army  and  thirteen  in  the  reserve.  A  man  belongs  to  the  "territorial 
army  "  (landwehr)  till  he  is  forty-three. 


3l8       THE  EMPIRE   OF   THE    TSARS  AND    THE  RUSSIANS. 

either  a  foreign  yoke  or  the  bondage  of  the  ' '  glebe. ' '  Among  the 
chief  Cosack  groups,  those  of  the  Dniepr  and  the  Don,  equahty 
reigned  as  well  as  libertj'.  Both  of  them — the  former  under 
Polish  sovereignty,  the  latter  under  the  Moscx)vite  sceptre — formed 
a  sort  of  democratic  republic.  They  elected  their  own  atamhns,^ 
and,  among  themselves,  knew  of  neither  nobles  nor  serfs.* 

In  this  respect  the  extreme  south  of  Russia  used  to  resemble 
certain  regions  of  the  extreme  north,  where  serfdom  and  nobility 
never  quite  struck  root.  lyike  the  peasants  of  Arkhangelsk  and 
Vi^tka,  the  Cosacks  long  preserved  the  forms  of  an  ancient 
Russian  commonwealth  foreign  to  class  distinctions.  These  free 
colonists  of  the  steppe,  for  long  years  partly  recruited  from  among 
runaway  serfs,  had  cast  behind  them,  in  flying  from  their  old 
homes,  all  traces  of  social  hierarchy.  The  class  distinctions 
gradually  regained  ground  among  them,  together  with  the 
administration  of  modem  Russia.  Their  ofl&cers  were  ennobled, 
and  of  the  old-time  equality,  as  of  old-time  liberty,  little  more  is 
left  than  a  memory.f 

'  Hetman  is  the  genuine  Little-Russian  title.  AtanUtn  is  a  Great- 
Russian  corruption,  and  has  somewhat  deviated  from  the  original  meaning, 
inasmuch  as  it  has  come  to  be  used  especially  for  "  robber-chi&V^  Thus  the 
renowned  Sti^nka  R^in,  and,  under  Catherine  II.,  Pugatchdf,  were  the 
atatnitns  of  their  dreaded  bands,  but  could  never,  by  any  possibility,  be 
entitled  hetmans,  while  even  Great-Russian  historians  never  would  designate 
Hetmans  Mazeppa  or  Khmeln^sky  as  aiamdns. 

*  The  Cosacks  of  later  times,  forming  the  vanguards  of  Russian  power, 
have  contributed  wonderfully  to  the  conquest  and  colonization  of  the  steppes 
of  the  southeast  and  certain  regions  of  Asia.  Of  all  modem  states,  Russia 
perhaps  has  best  known  how  to  utilize  military  colonization.  On  the  old- 
time  Cosacks  of  Little-  and  Great-Russia,  the  reader  might  do  well  to  peruse 
the  book  of  Prosper  M^rim^e,  Les  Cosaques  d'A  utre/ois,  in  reality  an  epitome 
of  the  researches  of  Mr.  Kostom^of,  one  of  the  most  eminent  of  Russian 
historians. 

t  Even  serfdom  itself  stole  in  amidst  the  Cosacks  at  the  last,  and,  at 
the  moment  of  emancipation,  there  were  nowhere  so  few  free  peasants  as  on 
the  territory  of  the  "Army  of  the  Don."  As  to  the  administrative  and 
financial  immunities  and  privileges,  they  got  gpradually  curtailed  and  almost 
annihilated  by  the  constant  encroachments  of  centralization,  as  well  as  by 
the  progress  of  commerce  and  means  of  communication.    Thus  it  is  that  the 


SOCIAL  HIERARCHY :    TOWNS  AND    URBAN  CLASSES.      319 

Among  the  accessory  classes  placed  outside  or,  it  might  be 
said,  in  the  gaps  between  the  normal  classes,  one  only  deserves 
special  mention ;  it  is  the  class  the  members  of  which  bear  the 
quaint  name  of  odnodvbrtsy  (jSii^Qxiva^  literally  "one-yarders"). 
They  are  men  who  own  only  one  house  and  yard,  and  one  lot  of 
land.  They  are  freemen  who,  unlike  the  peasants,  owned  the 
land  they  worked,  in  full  property,  individual  and  hereditary. 
In  this  respect  they  stand  nearer  to  the  nobles,  while,  by  their 
bringing  up  and  pecuniary  circumstances,  and  by  the  fact  that 
they  were  subject  to  poll-tax  and  conscription  equally  with  the  low- 
est classes  of  the  nation,  they  might  rather  be  counted  with  the 
peasantry.  This  class,  intermediate  between  the  two  main  orders 
of  the  state,  numbered  somewhere  between  two  or  three  million 
souls  of  both  sexes.  Some  of  them  have  achieved  a  degree  of 
prosperity  unusual  with  the  peasant,  while  others  have  sunk  to 
the  level  of  the  poorest  mujik.  I,ike  the  Cosacks,  these  people 
might  be  regarded  as  representatives  of  another  age  of  Russian 
society.  Their  origin  is  somewhat  obscure  ;  their  ranks  appear 
to  have  been  filled  from  several  different  classes.  They  them- 
selves consider  themselves,  sometimes  rightly  no  doubt,  as  nobles 
fallen  into  penury  and  stripped  of  their  privileges.  The  greater 
part  appear  to  be  descended  from  soldiers,  formerly  settled  along 
Moscovia's  southern  border,  and,  in  acknowledgment  of  their 
services,  provided  for  by  gifts  of  land  exempt  from  taxes  for  a 
long  time  ahead.  These  warlike  husbandmen  formed,  in  front  of 
the  Tatars,  a  line  of  observation  and  defence  which,  shifting 
slowly  southward,  gradually  strayed  down  into  the  steppes.  To 
this  day  it  is  in  the  Governments  of  Vor6nej,  Kursk,  Ori61,  in  the 
provinces  confining  on  Moscovia  of  old,  that  these  "  one-yarders  " 
are  met  with  in  greatest  numbers.  Whatever  their  origin,  they 
are,  outside  the  nobility,  almost  the  only  representatives  of  free  land 
interest,  as  known  in  Europe  ;  by  right  of  this,  they  form  an  in- 

individuality,  as  well  as  the  Self-government,  of  the  Cosacks  is    steadily 
disappearing. 


320      THE   EMPIRE   OF    THE    TSARS  AND    THE  RUSSIANS. 

termediate  link  between  the  former  serf  and  landlord,  and  may, 
some  day,  contribute  to  endow  Russia  with  one  of  the  things  she 
is  most  lacking  in — a  rural  middle  class. 

Most  of  the  classes  into  which  the  Russian  population  was  di- 
vided were  of  their  nature  so  peculiar  to  Russia,  to  her  social  state, 
that  one  hardly  sees  where  alien  populations  were  to  come  in,  with- 
out increasing  the  number  of  special  subdivisions.  Accordingly, 
in  order  to  do  no  violence  to  local  customs,  not  to  infringe  the 
recognized  rights  of  the  conquered  countries,  the  Russian  govem- 
•  ment,  at  each  new  annexion,  be  it  in  Europe  or  Asia,  found  itself 
compelled  to  create  for  its  new  subjects  new  rolls,  new  rubrics. 
Each  region,  each  race,  each  form  of  worship  even,  in  the  act 
of  being  embodied  in  the  empire,  gave  rise  to  special  divisions, 
social  categories,  each  with  its  own  rights  and  obligations.  The 
diversity  of  the  nationalities  that  inhabit  Russia  is  one  of  those 
things  which,  even  in  Europe,  delay  the  fusion  and  legal  imifica- 
tion  of  all  the  peoples  scattered  over  Russian  land.  The  nomadic 
tribes,  like  the  Samoy^ds  and  Kalmyks,  are  naturally  not  included 
in  the  four  main  classes.  The  Tatars,  the  Bashkir  and  all  the 
Mahometan  population,  still  occupy  in  the  cities  or  rural  districts 
a  special  position.  The  same  applies  in  some  ways  to  the  free 
agriculturists  of  Bessarabia,  the  burghers  of  what  was  once  Poland 
and  of  the  Baltic  provinces,  to  the  German  and  Greek  colonists  in 
the  interior,  lastly  to  the  Jews  of  the  western  provinces.  If  they 
do  not  form,  as  they  did  in  the  Polish  Commonwealth,  a  fifth 
order  in  the  state,  and  a  veritable  caste,  the  Israelites,  even  after 
the  last  reforms,  are  still  subject,  as  to  place  of  residence,  property, 
and  elective  functions,  to  certain  restrictions  which  keep  them  in 
the  condition  of  a  special -category  in  the  midst  of  the  very  classes 
of  which  they  are  members.  This  inferior  position  in  which  they 
are  held  has  probably  much  to  do  with  the  part  taken  by  many 
Jews  in  the  political  crimes  of  the  last  years.  The  supineness 
with  which  the  government  acts  in  the  matter  of  protecting  them 
against  popular  outbreaks,  and  the  severe  measures  against  them 


SOCIAL  HIERARCHY :    TOWNS  AND    URBAN  CLASSES.      32 1 

urged  from  time  to  time  by  the  patriots  of  Moscow  and  Kief,  are 
not  the  things  to  inspire  them  with  love  or  respect  for  the  laws  of 
the  empire. 

Such  is,  in  its  archaic  complexity,  the  social  structure  of 
Russia.  Under  the  law,  or  from  custom,  it  is  still,  in  a  great 
measure,  a  country  of  classes,  though  not  of  castes.  This  char- 
acter some  contend  she  must  preserve,  under  penalty  of  becoming 
another  China,  sacred  to  the  "  mandarinate. "  The  reforms  of 
Alexander  II.  tended  to  a  change  in  this  respect,  but  some  laws 
of  Alexander  III.  seem  rather  to  favor  a  retrograde  tendency. 
The  barriers  which  the  father  had  lowered  the  son  seems  inclined 
to  build  up  again. 


BOOK  V.     CHAPTER  II. 


Disproportion  between  the  Urban  and  Rural  Populations — Relatively  Small 
Number  of  Towns  and  Cities  in  Russia  and  all  Slavic  Countries — 
Explanation  of  this  Phenomenon — Reasons  which  Hinder  the  Agglom- 
eration of  the  Population — The  Towns  and  their  Inhabitants  before 
Peter  the  Great — Efforts  of  Peter  and  Catherine  to  Create  a  Middle  Class. 

The  first  thing  that  strikes  one  about  the  distribution  of  the 
classes  of  the  Russian  population  is  the  proportion — or  rather 
the  disproportion — in  their  numerical  force,  and  especially  between 
the  population  of  cities  and  that  of  the  cotmtry.  This  latter 
rubric  alone  comprises  the  vast  majority  of  Russian  subjects.  In 
European  Russia,  not  including  the  Kingdom  of  Poland,  the 
Grand  Duchy  of  Finland,  and  the  Caucasus,  the  latest  census 
(1867)  gave  for  the  "rural  class,"  comprising  the  Cosacks,  the 
figure  of  about  55,000,000;  for  the  "urban  classes"  proper — 
tradesmen,  merchants,  mechanics,  townspeople, —  less  than 
6,000,000.  The  nobility  and  clergy  are  omitted  in  this  valuation, 
the  former  numbering  from  800,000  to  900,000  souls,  the  latter 
about  600,000.  The  clergy  mostly  live  in  the  country,  while  the 
nobility  are  divided  about  evenly  between  town  and  cotmtry. 
Notwithstanding  the  fact  that  the  urban  population  has  been 
increasing  rapidly  for  the  last  twenty  years,  the  peasantry  — "the 
nirals  " — still  represent  an  immense  majority.  This  is  a  notable 
fact,  of  vital  importance  to  the  social,  economic,  and  political 
status  of  Russia. 

The  disproportion  between  the  two  chief  elements  of  the  popu- 
lation becomes  more  conspicuous  if  we  realize  what  goes  by  the 
name  of  town  in  Russian  statistics.  It  is  not  only  by  their 
scarcity,  their  dispersion  over  a  vast  territory,  that  Russian  towns 

32a 


SOCIAL  HIERARCHY :    TOWNS  AND   URBAN  CLASSES.      323 

diflfer  from  those  of  Western  Europe.  With  their  wooden  houses, 
low  and  far  between,  with  their  preposterously  wide  streets, 
for  which  only  the  fear  of  fire  accounts,  streets  usually  unpaved, 
where,  as  on  country  roads,  snow,  mud,  and  dirt  alternate,  these 
towns  are  lacking  in  what  constitutes  the  first  characteristics  of 
cities  in  Western  eyes.  Instead  of  standing  their  houses  closely 
side  by  side,  instead  of  heaping  tier  on  tier  up  to  the  sky,  like  the 
old  cities  of  France,  Italy,  and  Germany,  and  thus  forming  a 
little  world  entirely  distinct  from  the  country,  brimming  with 
only  men  and  men's  works,  the  Russian  towns  stretch  and  sprawl 
out  into  the  fields  into  which  they  merge,  leaving  between  the 
houses  and  the  public  buildings  acres  of  waste  land  that  can 
never  be  filled  or  enlivened.  To  the  traveller  arriving  from 
Europe  they  appear  as  something  huge,  desert,  unfinished ;  they 
often  seem  to  be  their  own  suburbs,  and  the  foreigner  expects  to 
enter  the  city  when  he  is  just  leaving  it  behind  him.  .  To  him 
they  are  so  many  overgrown  villages,  and,  in  fact,  there  is  less 
difference  here  than  anywhere  else,  between  village  and  town,  as 
regards  the  manner  of  building  and  of  living.  All  Russia  was, 
for  centuries,  nothing  but  one  village  of  a  great  many  square 
miles.  During  the  whole  Moscovite  period  of  her  existence,  there 
was  in  reality  only  one  city — the  capital,  the  "throne  city"  or 
residence  of  the  sovereign,  and  even  that  was  nothing  but  a  huge 
borough  built  in  wood,  scattered  around  a  stone  stronghold.  It 
is  only  since  the  fire  of  181 2  and  the  subsequent  reconstruction, 
since  stone,  or — more  correctly — brick  caused  wooden  buildings 
to  be  reserved  for  the  suburbs  and  allowed  the  houses  to  rise 
higher  and  draw  closer  together,  that  Moscow  has  really  assumed 
the  appearance  of  a  great  city.  The  capitals  of  governments, 
gradually  reconstructed  on  the  model  of  the  rejuvenated  old 
empire  capital,  are,  as  a  rule,  the  only  cities  deserving  of  the  name 
in  a  foreigner's  eyes.* 

*Ten  years  ago  Russia,  apart  from  Warsaw  and  the  Kingdom  of  Poland, 
owned  only  four  cities  having  100,000  inhabitants  :  St.  Petersburgh,  Moscow, 


324      THE  EMPIRE   OF   THE   TSARS  AND    THE  RUSSIANS. 

In  comparing  the  areas,  we  find  that  in  European  Russia  the 
cities— even  if  we  award  the  title  to  a  crowd  of  boroughs  three 
quarters  rural — are  ten,  fifteen,  twenty  times  farther  apart  than  in 
Western  Europe.  This  is  a  most  striking  contrast,  and  not  with- 
out influence  on  all  the  relations  of  life.  In  Russia,  the  cities  are 
like  islets  scattered  at  great  intervals  over  a  rural  ocean,  while  in 
the  West  they  press  against  one  another  like  the  islands  of  a 
group :  the  difference  between  the  Pacific  and  the  ^gean  Seas. 

The  contrast  is  not  less  great  as  regards  population.  In 
France,  in  Germany,  in  Belgium,  in  England,  the  towns  and  cities 
contain  one  third,  even  one  half  or  more,  of  the  entire  population  ; 
in  Russia,  scarcely  more  than  a  ninth,  and  even  of  that  number 
a  good  many  hardly  come  under  the  head  of  townspeople.  It  is 
kept  fluctuating  by  the  peasants,  who  are  only  temporary  residents, 
on  business,  or  in  pursuit  of  winter  earnings,  their  great  and  only 
resource  during  the  months  of  forced  inaction  in  the  country. 
The  little  importance,  the  insignificancy  of  the  towns  in  Russia, 
for  which  even  building  materials  seem  to  be  wanting,  is  one  of 
the  historical  characteristics  of  old  Moscovia,  of  what  Solovi6f 
calls  "Wooden  Europe"  ;  and  so  it  is,  in  due  proportion,  of 
modem  Russia,  especially  Great-Russia,  The  two  main  elements 
of  the  population  stand  towards  each  other  in  a  very  different  pro- 
portion firom  what  we  see  in  most  coimtries  of  Europe  and  America. 
What  contrasts  in  manners  and  customs,  ideas,  aspirations,  what 
differences  in  the  whole  drift  of  the  two  civilizations  are  implied  by 
this  one  fact !  By  the  light  of  its  statistics,  the  vast  Empire  of  the 
North,  in  spite  of  its  rapid  and  imceasing  progress,  looms  before 
us  as  a  rural  state,  an  empire  of  peasants  ! '     Russia  and  the  United 

Odessa,  and  Riga,  the  latter,  however,  far  more  German  than  Russian. 
Even  at  the  present  time  there  are  scarcely  ten  cities  that  reach  this  figure : 
the  four  just  mentioned,  Kief,  Khirkof,  Sardtof,  Elazdn,  Vilna,  perhaps 
Lodzy,  the  Polish  Manchester,  perhaps  Berditchdf,  the  great  Jewish  mart  in 
the  West,  and  possibly  Kishinidf,  the  huge,  half  Rumanian  village-capital 
of  Bessarabia. 

'  What  a  magnificent  vista  this  opens  in  the  future,  when  freedom  will 
have  become  habit,  and  the  normal  increase  of  population  will  have  raised  the 


SOCIAL  HIERARCHY :    TOWNS  AND    URBAN  CLASSES.      325 

States  of  America,  which,  as  regards  extent  of  territory  and  distri- 
bution of  the  population,  offer  so  many  points  of  comparison, 
stand  in  this  respect  in  the  most  perfect  opposition,  represent  the 
two  poles  of  modem  civilization.  It  is  to  be  observed,  however, 
that  even  in  Russia,  amidst  the  regions  which  can  show  the  rela- 
tively largest  urban  population,  figure  Ukraina,  New  Russia,  and 
most  of  the  lately  peopled  tracts.  Which  goes  to  show  that  modem 
colonization,  there  as  ever3rwhere,  proceeds  first  of  all  to  create  cities. 
The  same  phenomenon,  the  same  disproportion  between  town 
and  country,  is  observable,  in  various  degrees,  in  most  Slavic 
peoples — the  Slavs  of  the  West  as  well  as  of  the  East  and  South. 
This  is,  one  may  say,  one  of  the  principal  signs,  at  the  same  time 
as  one  of  the  principal  causes,  of  the  historical  inferiority  of  the 
Slavic  nations."  At  the  first  glance  the  Slavs  of  the  West — the 
Tchekhs  and  Poles — appear  to  differ  in  this  respect  as  in  so  many 
others,  from  their  Slav  brethren,  and  to  lean  more  towards  the 
Western  Europeans.  The  Kingdom  of  Poland  especially  is,  in  this 
respect,  singularly  unlike  the  empire  to  which  it  is  annexed.  The 
urban  and  the  rural  population  there  stand  to  each  other  in  much 
the  same  relation  as  they  do  in  the  wealthiest  countries  of  Teutono- 
I^atin  Europe,  i.  e. ,  as  one  to  three  ;  about  two  millions  in  the  cities, 
nigh  on  six  in  the  country.  Unfortimately  this  resemblance  is 
delusive.  The  population  of  these  Polish  towns  is  made  up  in 
great  part  of  Jews  and  Germans,  and  but  too  firequently  remains  a 
stranger  to  the  Slav  people  in  the  midst  of  which  it  lives,  in  spirit 
and  interests  as  well  as  in  origin.  Founded  mostly  by  German 
colonists,  and  all  more  or  less  peopled  with  Jews  talking  a  German 
jargon,  these  towns,  as  a  rule,  were  governed  according  to  the 

average  of  education  to  that  of  American  farmerdom :  acultured.land-owning, 
self-governing  peasantry  !  Wh}-,  it 's  the  ideal,  and  another  affinity  between 
Russia  and  America,  far  rather  than  polar  opposition.  (See  a  few  lines  lower.) 
'  The  Western  mind  never  can  quite  divest  itself  of  the  feudal  point  of 
view.  Centralization  is  the  universal  bane  bred  and  bequeathed  by 
feudalism.  There  was  no  need  of  hiding  behind  city  walls  from  a  brigand 
nobility,  where  no  such  nobility,  born  of  alien  conquest,  existed,  where  all 
the  classes,  high  and  low,  were  of  one  race  and  blood. 


326      THE   EMPIRE   OF   THE    TSARS  AND    THE   RUSSIANS. 

old  Magdeburg  code,  and  remained  isolated  in  the  midst  of  a 
commonwealth  composed  of  nobles,  confined  within  their  narrow 
enclosures,  hedged  in  by  their  privileges,  with  no  place  in  the 
constitution,  no  part  to  play  in  the  state,  without  influence  on  the 
civilization  and  politics  of  the  country,  for  which  this  lack  of  a 
national  middle  class  was  not  one  of  the  least  causes  of  ruin.  In 
ancient  Poland  the  towns  were  like  so  many  half  foreign  colonies 
in  the  midst  of  the  people,  or,  in  the  picturesque  words  of  a 
German  journalist,  "  like  drops  of  oil  on  a  pond."  In  the  whole 
of  Western  Russia,  in  Lithuania,  White  Russia,  and  those  parts  of 
lyittle  Russia  which  once  were  annexed  to  Poland,  the  situation  is 
still  about  the  same  as  in  Poland  proper.  The  Jews,  crowded  in 
the  towns  and  boroughs,  are  there  also  one  of  the  main  elements  of 
the  urban  population,  and  no  fusion  between  them  and  the  other 
inhabitants  has  ever  taken  place. 

In  Russia  proper,  on  the  contrary,  the  towns  were  genuine 
growths  of  the  national  soil ;  but  they  were  few,  scattered,  shabby  ; 
with  no  institutions  or  life  of  their  own,  they  hardly  emerged  out 
of  the  immense  rural  ocean.  Under  another  form  the  evil  was  the 
same ;  the  spirit  of  progress,  of  investigation,  and  liberty  was 
wanting.  There  were  no  towns  or  boroughs  in  old-time  Russia, 
hence  no  burghers,  no  town-class.  N6vgorod  and  Pskof,  both  not 
distant  from  the  Baltic,  both  in  contact  with  the  merchant  asso- 
ciation of  the  Hansa,  were  a  glorious  but  barren  exception.  Mos- 
covia,  which  swallowed  them  up,  was  an  essentially  rural  country  ; 
hence  in  great  part,  among  the  Russians  as  among  other  Slavs, 
the  persistence,  so  often  remarked  on,  of  the  patriarchal  or  family 
spirit.  In  this  state  of  peasants  and  landlords,  the  manners,  insti- 
tutions, all  the  social  relations,  have  long  preserved  something 
simple,  primitive,  and  as  though  rudimentary.* 

*As  the  historian,  Mr.  Zabi^lin,  observes  {History  of  Russian  Life 
from  the  Oldest  Times),  these  patriarchal  forms,  the  persistence  of  which 
amidst  the  Slavs  has  so  oflen  been  pointed  out,  really  spring  from  the 
predominance  of  home  life  in  the  absence  of  public  life.  As  this  fact  can 
be  traced  mainly  to  the  scarcity  and  insignificance  of  urban  centres,  it  is  not 


SOCIAL  HIERARCHY :    TOWNS  AND   URBAN  CLASSES.      327 

The  want  of  towns  had  another  serious  consequence  ;  it 
implied  the  want  of  the  first  economic  element  of  modem  civiliza- 
tion, liquid  wealth — personal  efiects,  circulating  capital, — an  essen- 
tial principle  of  all  great  material  development,  of  all  fruitful 
social  activity. 

Is  the  character  of  the  Russian  people,  are  the  supposed 
nomadic  tastes  of  the  Slavic  race,  responsible  for  this  long  absence 
and  persistent  scarcity  of  towns  ?  By  no  means.  We  must  look 
for  the  reason  elsewhere.  It  lies  in  the  economic  habits,  in  serf- 
dom, partly  also  in  the  soil,  the  climate,  the  very  formation  of  the 
land.  The  Russian  market  has,  so  far,  no  demands  capable  of 
keeping  at  par  the  productions  of  a  numerous  urban  population. 
The  trades  or  professions,  the  crafts  of  all  sorts,  which  generally 
have  their  seat  in  towns  and  cities,  are  as  yet  but  little  developed, 
or  still  remain  scattered  in  the  villages.  The  serf-owners  of  old 
found  it  convenient  to  have  everything  they  needed  manufactured 
on  their  own  estates,  articles  of  luxury  alone  excepted,  and  those 
they  imported  from  abroad.  The  severe  climate,  the  huge  dis- 
tances, have  a  similar  action.  In  the  north  especially,  the  poverty 
of  the  soil,  the  long,  enforced  idleness  of  the  winter  time,  with  its 
endless  nights,  compel  the  peasant  to  seek  means  of  existence  in 
other  things  than  the  tilling  of  the  ground.  Hence  it  is  that  this 
immense  rural  population  is  far  from  being  occupied  exclusively 
with  agriculture.  Rural  and  industrial  life  are  less  separated,  less 
specialized  than  in  the  West.  Articles  which,  in  other  countries, 
were  manufactured  in  workshops  or  city  factories,  by  essentially 
urban  operatives,  were  most  of  the  time  turned  out  in  villages  in 
the  mujik's  cabin.* 

to  be  wondered  at  that  the  same  historian  should  admit  cities  to  be  the  first 
nucleus  of  civil  society  and  the  first  agent  for  organizing  the  Russian  state. 
Owing  to  the  lack  of  vigor  and  the  small  number  of  these  hearths  of  civil 
life,  the  private  relations  between  men  must  necessarily,  for  a  long  time  to 
come,  retain  a  greater  importance  in  Russia  than  in  the  Western  states. 

*This  in  part  accounts  for  the  greater  intelligence  of  the  Russian  "  com- 
mon people. ' '    Nothing  is  so  deadening  to  mind  as  excessive  division  of  labor. 


328      THE  EMPIRE  OF   THE    TSARS  AND   THE  RUSSIANS. 

Thus  the  towns  had  against  them  the  social  status,  which 
formerly  bound  the  peasant  to  the  glebe,  and  to  this  day  binds 
him  to  his  commune  ;  they  had  against  them  the  few  wants  and 
scant  wealth  of  the  masses,  and  even  the  rigor  of  the  climate,  even 
the  people's  own  best  qualities.  The  easy  imitativeness,  the  skill 
and  deftness  of  hand,  natural  to  the  Russian,  discouraged  urban 
agglomerations  by  doing  away  with  the  need  of  permanent  pro- 
fessions, of  sedentary  trades,  of  specialties.  The  peasant,  being 
amply  capable  of  manufacturing  for  himself  all  that  his  humble 
needs  require,  has  rarely  occasion  for  the  services  of  townspeople  or 
the  products  of  town  life.  The  town  is  thus  reduced  to  being  little 
more  than  an  administrative  centre  and  a  place  of  barter — a  mart, 
lively  enough  and  even  crowded  at  fair  times,  empty  and  dreary 
during  the  greater  part  of  the  year.  Many  of  these  towns  are 
only  artificial  creations,  bom  at  the  beck  of  the  sovereign  hand, 
and,  were  it  withdrawn  from  them,  would  fall  back  into  rural 
nothingness.* 

This  mode  of  formation  of  urban  centres  accounts  for  the  fact 
that,  in  Russia,  town  and  country  differ  generally  so  little,  while 
sometimes  they  differ  very  greatly.  While  most  district  towns 
look  to  us  like  pretentious  villages,  the  large  cities,  especially  the 
two  capitals,  seem  colonies  of  another  nation  or  another  civiliza- 
tion. There  you  find  all  the  luxury,  all  the  pleasures,  all  the 
arts  of  the  West ;  life  seems  altogether  European,  while  in  the 
provinces  it  seems  Moscovite,  half  Oriental  still.  The  contrast  is 
thrilling  ;  yet  it  is  all  external,  on  the  siurface  :  appearances  differ, 
man  is  the  same.  Setting  aside  a  highest  class,  trained  to  foreign 
discipline,  the  bulk  of  the  city  people,  by  tastes  and  bringing  up, 
by  intellect  and  custom,  is  very  near  still  to  the  rural  population. 
In  these  cities,  frequently  built  all  in  a  lump  and  already  populous, 

*  The  introduction  of  machinery,  of  steam,  and  the  improvement  of 
means  of  communication,  tend  to  change  this  state  of  things  by  encouraging 
factory  industry  on  a  large  scale  to  the  detriment  of  the  lowly  village 
industries.  This  revolution,  which  is  going  on  in  Russia  as  everywhere 
else,  must  naturally  benefit  the  urban  centres. 


SOCIAL  HIERARCHY :    TOWNS  AND   URBAN  CLASSES.      329 

the  peasants  reside  in  great  numbers,  and  manners  are  half  rural 
still.  There  is  no  bourgeoisie,  in  the  French  acception  of  the 
word,  nor  an  urban  plebs  comparable  to  the  working  population 
of  large  French  cities  and  their  suburbs. 

Old-time  Moscovia  made  little  difference  between  town  and 
countr}', — townsman  and  husbandman, — of  which  modem  Russia 
has  made  two  separate  classes.  To  foreign  travellers  the  condition 
of  the  one  appeared  to  differ  very  little  from  that  of  the  other.  The 
Englishman  Fletcher,  Queen  Elizabeth's  envoy  at  the  court  of  the 
son  of  Ivan  the  Terrible,  looked  on  the  tradesman  and  craftsman 
as  part  of  the  lowest  class,  to  which  he  gives  the  humiliating 
designation  of  mujiks.'^  Not  until  the  seventeenth  century  are 
the  towns  habitually  treated  by  the  administration  as  something 
separate  from  the  country.  Only  at  this  epoch,  when  serfdom 
was  established,  did  the  urban  populations  begin  to  be  regarded 
as  a  separate  class  and  the  towns  as  separate  communities,  based 
on  a  special  scheme,  t  Until  then  the  towns  and  boroughs  and  the 
peasantry  were,  on  the  whole,  subject  to  one  and  the  same  law 
{^jus)  and  authority.  The  condition  of  the  lower  classes  in  the 
towns  was  little  more  to  be  envied  than  that  of  the  rural  classes. 
The  townsman  was  "  attached  "  to  his  native  town  as  the  husband- 
man to  his  native  glebe,  for  similar  reasons  too — that  the  exchequer 

*  Ivan  the  Terrible  himself,  in  his  letters  to  Queen  Elizabeth,  contemptu- 
ously refers  to  the  English  merchants,  come  to  Russia  for  trading  purposes, 
as  trading  mujiks.* 

f  All  this  and  what  follows  naturally  does  not  apply  to  either  N6vgorod 
or  Pskof,  who  had  maintained  their  right  of  self-government,  and  where,  as 
in  the  Republics  of  Mediaeval  Italy,  we  find  the  strife  between  rich  and  poor, 
between  '■'' popolo grasso''''  and  ^^ popolo  minuto.*' 

*  This  fact  alone  proves  that  the  designation  which  so  shocks  Western 
delicacy  is,  to  the  Russian  ear,  neither  "  humiliating"  nor  "  contemptuous." 
It  was  continually  used  simply  in  the  sense  of  "  man,"  and  is  so  still  by  the 
people.  When  a  man  is  admiringly  spoken  of  as  "a  handsome,  portly, 
robust  mujik,'^  or  as  "an  honest,  quiet  ntujik,'"  those  who  so  describe  him 
certainly  do  not  mean  to  disparage  him,  but  use  the  word  mujik  exactly  in 
the  way  that  Englishmen,  in  like  case,  would  use  "  fellow"  and  Germans 
Kerl.  The  peasant  woman  who  speaks  of  her  mujik  does  not  mean  any  more 
disrespect  to  him  than  the  English  laborer's  wife  in  speaking  of  her  "  man." 


330      THE  EMPIRE   OF   THE    TSARS  AND   THE  RUSSIANS. 

might  not  be  defrauded  by  the  departure  of  the  tax-payer,  and 
that  the  community,  being  taxed  in  a  lump  and  mutually  respon- 
sible, might  not  have  to  pay  for  the  absentees.  The  prohibition 
of  going  from  one  town  or  borough  to  another  was  enforced  by 
measures  that  recall  the  laws  invented  for  the  curiales  in  the  latter 
times  of  the  Roman  Empire.  For  such  flight  or  desertion  the 
Romdnofs,  in  1658,  established  the  penalty  of  death. 

Yet  there  was  in  the  Russian  towns  a  sort  of  privileged  class : 
the  wealthy  merchants,  wholesale  dealers,  especially  those  who 
traded  with  foreign  lands.  They  were  called  "guests  "  {gbsti^^ 
probably  because  originally  the  greater  number  of  them  were  for- 
eigners. There  are  mentions  of  these  ' '  guests ' '  in  the  times  of  the 
Varangians.  In  primitive  Russia,  where  the  vast  distances  and 
the  internecine  wars  made  commerce  at  once  more  precarious  and 
more  profitable,  the  men  who  were  sufficiently  enterprising  to 
devote  themselves  to  it  were  surrounded  with  a  respectful  consid- 
eration, which  remained  their  due  even  in  the  midst  of  the  abase- 
ment into  which  the  quarrels  of  the  princes  and  the  Tatar  domi- 
nation plunged  the  national  trade.  This  name  of  ghsti,  prob- 
ably of  Teutonic  origin,'  was  awarded  by  the  princes  as  a  title 
of  honor,  and  many  of  them  served  the  kniazes  in  the  capacity  of 
advisers  or  ambassadors.*  After  the  gbsti  came  the  merchants 
of  lower  standing  and  the  m&rQ.\oyrtisrx\s.VL--poss'iidskiyi^^ — both  of 
which  classes  were  divided  into  sundry  categories,  each  of  which 

*  It  must  be  traced  much  farther  back.  It  is  part  of  the  word-treasure 
which  primitive  Sanskrit  bequeathed  to  all  her  daughters,  among  whom  Old 
Slavic  and  Old  Gothic  claim  equal  rank.  The  original  word  meant  "cow- 
killer,"  in  appropriate,  if  slightly  realistic,  allusion  to  the  ponderous 
hospitalities  of  primitive  ages. 

*  It  is  from  these  gdsti,  in  the  sense  of  merchants,  that  the  Russian 
equivalent  for  the  Oriental  bazar  is  called  gostinoy-dvor. 

t  From  possdd,  a  "  borough"  ;  the  chief  magistrate  of  Ndvgorod  was 
called  Possddnik.* 

*  The  title  corresponds  to  "  mayor,"  but  with  more  power ;  rather  to  the 
podgstd.  of  the  Italian  Republics.  The  word  posshd  is  derived  from  sidiiti, 
"to  sit,  settle  "  =  sedere. 


SOCIAL   HIERARCHY :    TOWNS  AND    URBAN  CLASSES.      33 1 

had  its  own  council  or  Duma,''  invested  with  the  right  of 
deciding  questions  arising  between  its  own  members. 

It  was  difficult  for  these  merchants  and  townsmen  to  develop 
into  an  influential  class,  in  a  country  cut  oflf  from  Europe  and  the 
sea,  and  from  all  the  commercial  highroads  by  I^ithuania,  the 
Teutonic  Order,  and  the  Tatars.  Ivan  IV.  the  Terrible,  the  foe 
of  the  old  princely  and  boyar  races,  strove  to  raise  the  people  of 
towns,  especially  those  of  Moscow.  But  the  hand  of  the  tsars 
could  not  implant  in  Moscovia  the  liberties  it  was  rooting  out  in 
N5vgorod  and  Pskof,  where  they  had  long  flourished.  The 
absence  of  feudalism  or  aristocracy,  which  at  first  sight  would  seem 
to  favor  the  development  of  a  town-class,  rather  proved  an  obstacle. 
The  sovereigns  had  not  so  much  interest  in  leaning  on  the  cities 
for  support,  and  the  cities  did  not  find  in  the  dissensions  between 
the  great  vassals  and  the  central  power  opportunities  for  rising  and 
obtaining  franchises. 

Thus,  then,  when  Peter  the  Great  came  to  the  throne,  there 
was,  in  spite  of  some  attempts  made  by  his  father  Alexis,  nothing 
at  all  answering  to  what  Europe  knows  under  the  name  of 
bourgeoisie  in  all  these  towns,  devoid  of  industry,  unprovided 
with  means  of  communication,  with  scarcely  any  permanent 
population. 

Such  a  gap  could  not  but  strike  the  practical  Tsar,  whose 
favorite  model  was  Holland,  the  most  bourgeois  co\xa.\ry  in  Europe. 
A  middle  class,  unfortunately,  could  not  be  improvised  as  quickly 
as  a  fleet  or  army.  Peter's  special  regulations,  the  administrative 
self-government  with  which  he  endowed  the  cities,  probably  did 
not  help  to  create  an  urban  class  as  much  as  the  reformer's  general 
activity,  the  introduction  of  new  industries  and  new  means  of 
communication,  and  especially  the  opening  up  of  Russia  to  Europe. 

■'  Zhima,  from  d^tnati,  "  to  think."  It  is  the  name  given  to  all  the  town- 
councils  and  extended  to  the  buildings  in  which  they  are  held.  The  Paris 
H6tel-de-Ville  and  the  New  York  City-Hall  would  both  be  translated  Diima 
in  Russian. 


332       THE  EMPIRE   OF   THE    TSARS  AND    THE  RUSSIANS. 

Yet  the  progress  was  slow.  The  maladministration  of  Peter's 
successors,  the  restrictions  imposed  on  the  franchises  of  the  towns 
and  merchants,  and,  lastly,  under  Elizabeth,  the  erection  of  the 
chief  branches  of  commerce  into  monopolies,  to  be  granted  to  court 
favorites,  delayed  the  birth  of  a  middle  class  over  half  a  century. 
Catherine  II.,  in  this  as  in  everything,  took  up  and  carried  on 
Peter's  work.  She  wished  to  constitute  at  the  same  time  a  nobility 
and  a  bourgeoisie,  both  which  things  Russia  equally  lacked.*  It 
was  Catherine  who  divided  the  inhabitants  of  towns  and  cities 
into  the  different  groups  which  still  exist.  Merchants,  trades- 
men, small  burghers,  mechanics,  received  from  her  a  corporative 
organization.  Each  of  these  groups  had  elective  * '  heads, ' '  and 
all  were  united  into  municipal  corporations,  to  which  was  restored 
the  right  of  doing  justice  and  of  internal  administration  or 
self-government. 

In  organizing  the  urban  class,  both  Peter  and  Catherine  nat- 
urally imitated  the  contemporary  institutions  of  Western  Europe, 
especially  those  of  Teutonic  countries — England  and  Germany, 
Holland  and  Sweden.  Hence,  partly,  the  faultiness  and  failure 
of  a  work,  mistakenly  copied  from  foreign  models  already  in  the 
stage  of  decay.  Just  when  they  were  on  the  point  of  disappearing 
from  the  more  enlightened  Western  states,  the  craft  corporations 
and  the  merchant  guilds  were  introduced  into  Russia.  Whatever 
its  merits  and  demerits,  this  corporative  organization,  which  sits 
so  easy  on  the  German,  does  not  fit  the  Russian  at  all.  He  has, 
according  to  a  very  just  remark  of  Haxthausen,  the  spirit  of  asso- 
ciation, not  that  of  corporation,  and  they  are  two  very  diflFerent 
things.     He  has  a  national  form  of  association,  the  ari^l,  of  which 

*  In  this  respect,  as  in  several  others,  some  of  Catherine's  advisers 
sometimes  commended  singular  devices  or  gave  way  to  strange  delusions. 
Nicolas  Turgu^nief  {La  Russie  et  les  Russes,  v.  ii.,  p.  221)  tells  how  one  of 
the  most  prominent  men  of  this  grand  reign  took,  a  great  and  active  part  in 
the  foundation,  in  both  capitals,  of  gigantic  foundling  houses,  because  he 
flattered  himself  that  he  was  thereby  preparing  the  creation  of  a  third 
estate  ! 


SOCIAL  HIERARCHY:    TOWNS  AND   URBAN  CLASSES.      333 

all  the  members  have  equal  rights  and  work  for  the  common  good, 
under  chiefs  freely  elected  by  their  peers.  He  does  not  care  for 
closed  corporations,  bristling  with  privileges  and  monopolies, 
hierarchically  subdivided  into  unequal  ranks  or  grades,  like  the 
craft-corporations  of  old  in  Western  Europe,  with  their  "  masters, " 
"companions,"  and  "apprentices."  The  corporative  spirit  was 
only  a  form  of  the  feudal  spirit,  which  had  introduced  into  the 
world  of  labor  the  same  principle  of  privilege  and  vassalage  that 
prevailed  in  the  nobility  and  the  tenure  of  property,  and  therefore 
is  nowhere  to  be  found  in  old-time  Moscovia,  nor  could  it  obtain 
in  modem  Russia.  Vainly  Catherine  II.  strove  to  combine  the 
mechanics  into  crafts  or  tsekhs — the  word  being  taken  bodily 
from  the  German  Zeche — they  remained  lifeless  registers,  to  serve 
little  else  than  the  uses  of  police  registering,  and  wherever  the 
unwieldy  things  with  their  superannuated  pomp  and  circumstance 
still  survive,  we  cannot  see  that  either  the  mechanic  or  national 
industry  has  derived  much  profit  from  them.* 

*  On  this  point,  as  on  so  many  others,  there  is,  in  the  laws  and  adminis- 
tration, a  lack  of  unity  and  precision,  which  too  often  hreeds  confusion  and 
arbitrariness.  The  law  does  not  define  the  crafts  that  must  be  made  into 
corporations  ;  accordingly  such  or  such  a  trade  is  free  in  certain  cities,  while 
in  others  it  is  bound  by  licenses,  which  are  delivered  by  a  board  of  experts 
on  the  applicant's  passing  an  examination. 


BOOK  V.     CHAPTER  III. 

Classification  of  the  Urban  Popnlation  since  Catherine  II. — The  Mechanic 
and  the  MUsh-tchanln  or  "Small  Burgher" — Urban  Proletariate — How 
this  Class  has,  as  a  Rule,  Preserved  the  same  Spirit  as  the  Rural  Popula- 
tion— The  Merchant  Guilds  and  their  Privileges — How  Emancipation 
has  Made  it  Possible  for  them  to  Own  Real  Estate — The  "  Honorary 
Citizens  "  or  "  Notables  "  among  the  Townspeople — Russia,  till  very 
Lately,  Had  none  of  the  Professions  out  of  which  the  Western  Bour- 
geoisie Used  to  be  Recruited — In  how  far  the  Reforms  Help  Create  a 
Middle  Class  in  the  European  Sense. 

The  town  population,  ever  since  Peter  I.  and  Catherine  II., 
has  been  classed  under  five  or  six  rubrics,  themselves  divided  into 
two  main  categories:  the  wholesale  traders,  forming  a  superior 
class,  which  was  long  a  privileged  one  ;  and  the  retail  traders,  the 
mechanics  of  all  sorts,  subdivided  into  several  categories,  differing 
only  in  name.  There  are  the  poorer  townspeople, — the  mechan- 
ics,— ^the  members  of  trade  corporations,  and  lastly  the  ' '  miscel- 
lany," a  sort  of  town-rabble,  containing  all  those  who  do  not  fit 
into  any  partictdar  class.  Of  these  categories,  the  first  is  the 
most  important,  and  can  be  regarded  as  the  type  of  the  entire 
lower  class  of  the  urban  population.  Its  name,  miesh-tchanln^ 
is  usually  translated  in  French  bourgeois,  yet  the  man  thus 
designated  answers  little  enough  to  the  French  term.  The  miish- 
tchariin  *  is  a  person  who  dwells  in  towns  and  who,  being  neither 
noble  nor  priest,  is  not  rich  enough  to  inscribe  his  name  on  the 
roll  of  the  merchants,  yet  does  not  belong  to  a  trade  corporation. 
He  usually  gets  his  livelihood  ixova.  some  «mall  business  or  some 

*  Miish-tchanin,  plural  miish-tch&nii,  from  tni^sto,  "a  place,"  which 
gives  the  diminutive  miis-tiitch-ko,  "  a  borough,  a  small  town." 

334 


SOCIAL  HIERARCHY  ■    TOWNS  AND    URBAN  CLASSES.      335 

manual  trade.  Many  have  no  assured  means  of  existence.  Their 
business  or  real  property  is,  or  was  until  lately,  subject  to  limita- 
tions :  they  could  not  do  business  beyond  a  certain  figure,  or  own 
real  estate  worth  more  than  five  or  six  thousand  roubles.  If  they 
passed  that  line,  they  had  to  register  as  merchants.  Although 
legally  a  townsman,  indeed,  the  typical  townsman,  the  miSsh- 
tchanln  is  frequently  compelled  to  migrate  to  the  country  to  seek 
a  living.  In  some  governments  there  is  quite  a  number  of  them 
settled  in  villages,  while  the  peasant,  to  whom  the  working  of  the 
soil  does  not  always  yield  permanent  occupation  or  sufl&cient 
returns,  often  crowds  the  cities,  where  he  has  appropriated  the 
monopoly  of  sundry  crafts.  In  St.  Petersburgh  alone  there  live 
over  two  hundred  thousand  peasants.*  The  two  classes  fre- 
quently exchange  residences,  now  opening  a  competition  in  man- 
ual labor  and  retail  trade  on  the  smallest  scale,  in  the  factories  or 
at  the  fairs  ;  now  again  keeping  each  to  its  own  favorite  pursuits, 
the  townsman  carrying  into  the  country  city  ways  and  crafts,  the 
peasant  bringing  to  town  his  pair  of  arms,  his  axe,  his  horse,  both 
taking  many  risks,  often  more  to  the  prejudice  of  the  townsman 
than  the  countryman. 

This  class  of  miish-tchdnii  and  the  kindred  groups  of  mechanics 
form  the  large  majority  of  the  town  populations.  It  is  perhaps 
the  portion  of  the  Russian  people  least  favored  by  fortune.  The 
peasant  is  given  his  cabin  and  small  enclosed  house-lot  by  the 
Emancipation  Act ;  he  also  has  his  share  of  the  commons — the 
communal  land.  Very  different  is  the  condition  of  the  miish- 
tchariin.  He  lives,  like  the  working  population  of  Western 
Europe,  from  hand  to  mouth.  The  law  has  no  guarantee  for  him, 
the  commune  is  usually  unable  to  supply  him  with  any  certain 
share  of  land  or  work.  If  a  few  do  achieve  a  competence,  or  even 
wealth,  the  greater  part  lead  a  precarious  existence.  Perhaps  one 
tenth  of  them  own  houses  in  the  towns.     The  rest  hire  lodgings. 

*  According  to  some  statistical  reports,  the  peasants  would  average  20 
per  cent,  of  the  urban  population. 


336      THE  EMPIRE  OF   THE    TSA/tS  AND   THE  XUSSJANS. 

Those  who  go  to  seek  a  living  in  villages  are  not  entitled  to  a 
share  in  the  communal  good  things.  Some,  now  and  then,  elect 
to  become  peasants :  they  have  to  obtain  admittance  into  the  rural 
commune,  and  pay  cash  down  for  a  right  to  the  land  to  which  the 
peasant  is  entitled  by  birth. 

Until  very  lately  it  was  these  two  alone — the  poor  townsman 
and  the  mechanic — who,  along  with  the  peasant,  bore  the  two 
heaviest  burdens  of  the  state  :  the  poll-tax  or  capitation,  and  the 
blood-tax  or  military  conscription.  Alexander  II.  lightened  the 
latter  burden,  by  imposing  it  equally  on  all  classes.  Alexander 
III.  freed  them  from  capitation  in  1883.  The  law  has  given  to 
the  townspeople  equality  in  btu"dens  and  rights ;  it  cannot  go 
further  and  give  them  real  property,  as  to  the  husbandman.  The 
Russians,  disposing  of  vast  communal  lands,  boast  that  they  have 
no  proletarians,  and  bend  a  scornful  gaze  on  the  dangers  with 
which  this  social  plague  threatens  the  West.  In  reality,  however, 
Russia  already  has  an  urban  proletariate,  always  the  most  trouble- 
some, in  some  nations — in  France  at  any  rate — the  most  riotous, 
the  only  one  to  be  dreaded.  There  are  certain  social  troubles 
which  no  country,  be  it  never  so  new  and  bold,  so  vast  and  rich 
in  land,  seems  fated  to  be  exempted  from ;  of  this  number  are 
urban  proletariate  and  the  wages  question  in  cities.  If  the  Rus- 
sian proletariate  is  not  more  numerous,  the  reason  is  that  the 
cities  themselves  are  relatively  neither  many  nor  populous.  The 
progress  of  industry  and  civilization,  the  very  increase  of  the 
population  will  necessarily  have  their  usual  effect — of  increasing 
the  proletariate  by  enlarging  the  towns.  This  class  has  already 
received  from  the  emancipation  an  important  reinforcement :  it 
has  become  the  refuge  of  several  categories  of  former  serfs, 
especially  the  so-called  ' '  court-people, ' '  i.  e.  the  house-serfis. 
These  people,  who,  by  virtue  of  their  attendance  on  their 
masters'  persons,  had  been  estranged  from  the  village  commune 
through  generations,  were  not  in  a  condition,  on  finding  them- 
selves free,  to  vindicate  their  share  of  the  communal  land.     Freed 


SOCIAL  HIERARCHY :    TOWNS  AND    URBAN  CLASSES.      337 

from  the  control  of  their  masters,  they  must  live  by  their  labor, 
owning  no  right  to  the  land  they  tread  or  the  house  they  live  in, 
with  no  other  inheritance  to  hand  down  to  their  children  than  the 
light  hoard  of  their  slender  savings.  No ;  Russia  has  not  yet 
found,  any  more  than  any  other  country,  the  secret  of  securing  to 
each  man  a  permanent  dwelling,  to  each  family  an  hereditary 
homestead,  to  place  the  ever  increasing  swarms  of  human  units 
above  the  reach  of  vice  or  improvidence. 

As  to  their  mode  of  life,  these  miish-tchdnii  ?xA  mechanics  come 
very  near  to  the  least  favored  classes  of  the  western  cities  of 
Europe.  They  differ  from  them,  however,  in  an  important  point : 
the  absence  of  class  spirit,  of  "  city  feeling,"  so  to  speak.  They 
have  not,  like  the  corresponding  classes  in  the  rest  of  Europe,  the 
spirit  of  opposition  against  both  the  upper  bourgeoisie  and  the 
rural  population.  In  ideas,  beliefs,  and  feeling,  as  well  as  in  garb 
and  manners,  they  differ  very  little  as  yet  from  the  latter.  Re- 
ligion, which,  in  Russia,  stjll  is  one  of  the  great  social  forces,  still 
holds  under  control  those  urban  masses  which,  in  the  rest  of 
Europe,  it  appears  to  have  irretrievably  lost,  be  its  name  Catholi- 
cism or  Protestantism.  Thus  it  is  that  the  Russian  people  are 
pervaded  at  bottom  by  a  unity,  a  harmony  of  feeling  which  de- 
serves the  more  to  be  noticed  that  it  is  getting  so  rare  elsewhere, 
and  that,  even  where  it  still  prevails,  time  will  inevitably  weaken  it. 
This  moral  condition  of  the  urban  working  classes  accounts  for 
the  failure  of  the  nihilistic  propaganda  to  influence  it.  Sundry 
tokens,  however,  warrant  the  fear  that  the  Russian  working^en 
may  not  always  remain  deaf  to  revolutionary  incitements.  Wage 
questions  and  strikes  may  yet  do  their  wonted  evil  work. 

In  this  state  of  things  Russia  has,  for  a  more  or  less  prolonged 
period,  a  principle  of  strength  and  stability  which  all  the  other 
nations  of  the  European  continent  lack.  She  is  less  exposed  to 
those  struggles  for  influence  between  town  and  country  from 
which  the  West  has  suffered  so  much  and  which,  by  causing  per- 
petual disturbances  and  reactions,  hinder  any  kind  of  progress, 


33^       THE   EMPIRE   OF    THE    TSARS  AND    THE   RUSSIANS. 

and  is  exempt  for  a  while  longer  from  those  intermittent  collisions 
between  the  sceptical  and  at  the  same  time  utopistic  spirit  of  the 
dty  working^an  and  the  coarsely  conservative  and  blindly  posi- 
tive spirit  of  the  peasant. 

Russian  legislation  separates  the  inhabitants  of  cities  into  two 
accurately  defined  groups :  the  mechanics  or  townspeople  who 
have  not  risen  above  the  foot  of  the  social  ladder,  and  those  towns- 
men who  have  swung  themselves  up  to  the  higher  nings.  The 
latter  are  usually  designated  as  "merchants"  {kuptsy).  This 
title  is  legally  awarded  only  to  such  as  own  a  certain  capital  and 
pay  certain  license-dues.  The  merchants,  long  in  possession  of 
important  privileges,  never  could  constitute  themselves  into  a 
closed  class  :  the  poor  townsman,  the  peasant,  the  nobleman  even 
who  devotes  himself  to  commerce,  can  have  his  name  inscribed  on 
their  roll ;  it  is  a  question  of  means.  These  "  merchants  "  again 
are  subdivided  into  several  categories,  known  under  the  foreign 
name  of  "guilds,"  introduced  by  Peter  the  Great.  There  are 
three  of  them,  which  for  a  long  time  enjoyed  very  diflferent  pre- 
rogatives, but  at  the  present  day  have  identical  civil  rights.  The 
distinction  between  the  guilds  is  based  only  on  the  figure  of  the 
capital  declared  and  the  proportionate  dues  they  pay  the  State  for 
their  license.  The  members  of  the  first  guild  have  the  freedom  of 
trading  through  the  entire  extent  of  the  empire,  as  well  as  abroad  ; 
they  pay  five  hundred  roubles  a  year.  The  members  of  the  second 
are  limited  to  home  trade.  The  guilds  have  in  every  city  their 
boards  and  elective  ' '  heads  ' '  or  syndics.  The  merchants,  how- 
ever, rise  or  descend  from  one  to  another,  as  their  fortune  grows  or 
decreases,  and  if  business  is  ver>'  bad  they  are  always  in  danger 
of  falling  down  into  the  lowest  urban  class,  the  mihh-tchdnii. 

The  merchants  of  the  two  first  guilds  belong,  or  rather  be- 
longed, to  the  privileged  classes.  The  emperors  had  granted 
them  all  the  personal  rights  which  the  nobility  enjoyed  :  exemp- 
tion from  the  poll-tax,  from  military  conscription,  from  corporal 


SOCIAL  HIERARCHY :    TOWNS  AND    URBAN  CLASSES.      339 

punishment.  In  a  country  like  Russia,  nothing  more  could  be 
done  for  the  encouragement  of  trade  and  bourgeoisie.  The 
merchants  were  free  to  acquire  wealth,  free  to  enjoy  it.  One 
thing  only  was  reftised  them,  and  this  restriction  itself  well  could 
pass,  in  the  lawgiver's  eyes,  for  a  stimulus  to  trade.  Merchants, 
as  all  persons  not  belonging  to  the  nobility,  were  forbidden  to  own 
"inhabited  lands,"  which  means  that  they  could  not  hold  serfs. 
This  virtually  excluded  them  from  owning  rural  property  and 
limited  them  to  houses  in  the  towns  and  cities,  and  country  houses 
in  the  suburbs  or  environs.  This  lessened  the  temptation  to  with- 
draw from  commerce  the  capital  that  had  been  launched  into  it. 

This  prohibition  had  a  surer  and  less  beneficial  efiect :  it  kept 
apart  commerce  and  agriculture,  by  maintaining  a  chasm  between 
the  merchant  or  manufacturer  and  both  the  noble  landowner  and 
the  husbandman.  While  serfdom  made  the  formation  of  a  middle 
class  in  the  country  almost  impossible,  the  monopoly  held  by  the 
nobility  prevented  the  middle  class  slowly  forming  in  the  cities 
from  spreading  over  the  country.  The  merchants  were  as  good  as 
prisoners  in  the  towns,  tied  down  to  business.  Now  that  the 
abolition  of  serfdom  has,  ipso  facto,  done  away  with  the  distinction 
between  "inhabited"  and  "non-inhabited"  real  estate,  rural 
property  has  become  free  to  all  classes.  By  this  indirect  conse- 
quence emancipation  closely  touches  the  middle  class,  and  this 
fact  alone  amounts  to  a  social  revolution  of  deep  bearing  on  the 
future  of  Russia. 

The  merchants  of  the  first  guild  were  possessed  of  nearly  all 
the  nobility's  personal  privileges ;  the  wealthier  ones  nevertheless 
strove  to  get  out  of  their  condition.  They  coveted,  for  themselves 
or  their  children,  the  shadow  of  which  the  substance  was  theirs, 
and  many  took  a  road  which  led  to  it  rapidly :  state  service. 
This  was  another  cause  of  enfeeblement  to  the  middle  class,  which 
seemed  to  grow  and  thrive  only  to  benefit  another  class,  which,  in 
its  turn,  felt  this  accession  as  rather  an  encumbrance.  Yet  it 
would  be  unfair  to  see  mere  puerile  vanity  in  this  chase  after 


340      THE  EMPIRE  OF   THE   TSARS  AND    THE  RUSSIANS. 

such  functions  and  decorations  as  conferred  nobility.  For  if  the 
merchant  enjoyed  all  the  substantially  useful  privileges  of  the 
nobility,  his  tenure  of  them  was  entirely  dependent  on  his  name 
being  inscribed  in  the  guild  roll.  One  stroke  of  ill  luck  could 
take  them  from  him  and  lower  him  to  the  level  of  the  miisk- 
ichanln,  subject  to  capitation,  conscription,  and  corporal  punish- 
ment. Hereditary  nobility  and  state  service  could  alone  protect 
a  family  from  such  a  fall. 

To  remedy  the  precarious  position  so  galling  to  the  merchants, 
the  Emperor  Nicolas  created  a  new  category  for  them,  which, 
while  straitening  the  road  to  nobility,  secured  to  them  the  advan- 
tages they  were  striving  for.  This  new  rung  of  the  Russian 
social  ladder  has  name,  "  honorary  citizen,"  nearly  answering  the 
"town-notable"  of  old.  These  "notables"  enjoy  the  same 
privileges  as  the  merchants  of  the  first  g^ld  without  being  bound 
to  be  inscribed  on  the  guild  rolls.  It  was  in  reality  a  new  variety 
of  nobility,  a  sort  of  burgher-nobility  conferred  by  the  sovereign 
or  by  letters-patent  from  the  Senate  as  a  reward  for  certain  ser- 
vices and  the  performance  of  certain  functions.  As  the  nobility 
proper,  this  one  was  divided  into  two  categories.  There  was 
the  "  personal  "  and  the  "  hereditary  "  "  honorary  citizen,"  the 
latter  transmitting  to  his  posterity  his  qualities  and  exemptions. 
This  rubric  still  exists,  but  has  become  a  merely  nominal  distinc- 
tion, the  main  exemptions  attached  to  it  having  been  extended  to 
all  the  inhabitants  of  cities.  The  abrogation  of  capitation  and 
corporal  punishment  on  one  side  and  the  institution  of  universal 
obhgatory  military  service  on  the  other  have  left  but  little  value 
to  all  these  distinctions.  Town  notables  and  merchants  can 
scarcely  retain  many  privileges  when  so  few  are  left  to  the 
nobility. 

Nowadays  it  is  education,  manners,  the  degree  of  culture,which 
keep  the  different  classes  of  society  separate.  The  habits  of  life 
raise  between  them  barriers  which  the  law  is  powerless  to  pull 
down.    In  this  respect,  the  distinctions  are  more  marked  than  even 


SOCIAL  HIERARCHY :    TOWNS  AND    URBAN  CLASSES.      34I 

in  Western  Europe.  From  the  uneven  manner  in  which  civilization 
entered  the  various  layers  of  society,  it  could  not  be  otherwise. 
The  nobility,  which  has  long  had  the  monopoly  of  European  in- 
struction, continues  to  live  apart  from  the  merchants  and  a  middle 
class  whom  wealth  has  not  yet  lifted  over  the  threshold  of  culture. 
Thus,  in  large  cities,  there  always  are  two  clubs :  one  for  the 
nobility,  the  other  for  the  merchants.  The  two  classes,  socially, 
form  two  separate  towns,  which  mix  very  little  in  private  life, 
differing  even  in  their  mode  of  life.  There  are,  however,  signs  of 
a  change  in  the  near  future.  The  nobility  and  the  bourgeoisie 
now  meet  not  only  in  pubhc  assemblies  to  deliberate  on  the  affairs 
of  town  or  province,  but  begin  to  draw  nearer  together  by  man- 
ners, tastes,  and  culture,  the  one  becoming  more  national,  the 
other  more  European. 

Some  years  back,  a  Russian  merchant  usually  was  a  man  with 
a  long  beard,  in  a  long-skirted  kaftan,  and  high  leather  boots ;  he 
remained  as  faithful  as  the  peasant  himself  to  Moscovite  traditions 
and  the  national  garb.  Nowadays  there  is  the  old-time  merchant, 
strict  guardian  of  old  customs ;  sometimes  owner  of  a  large  for- 
tune, yet  not  the  less  attached  to  the  old  mode  of  life  ;  orthodox 
or  dissenter  (raskhhiik),  like  the  common  people,  the  peasant  or 
small  townsman,  from  whom  he  really  differs  only  by  his  wealth  ; 
a  faithful  observer  of  fasts  and  holidays,  combining  to  a  singular 
degree  superstition  and  slyness,  plain  living  and  vastness  of 
commercial  operations.  Then  there  is  the  modem  merchant, 
often  the  son  or  grandson  of  the  other,  with  clean-shaved  chin, 
anxious  to  give  up  ancestral  customs  and  to  imitate  the  nobility 
and  assume  French  fashions.  The  number  of  such  naturally  in- 
creases daily  ;  they  have  palatial  houses,  drawing-rooms  furnished 
luxuriously  if  not  always  tastefully,  and  all  the  comforts  of  the 
West.  Their  sons  learn  French  and  travel  abroad  ;  many  already 
lead  in  Paris  an  existence  as  worldly,  as  dissipated  as  the  young 
nobles,  and  many  contrive,  after  coming  home,  to  get  themselves 
admitted  into  the  drawing-rooms  of  the  nobility. 


342       THE  EMPIRE   OF   THE    TSARS  AND    THE  RUSSIANS. 

Between  these  two  types  there  is  an  intermediate  one,  which 
marks  the  transition  from  one  to  the  other  and  frequently  com- 
bines the  pretensions  and  foibles  of  both  ;  it  is  the  tradesman  who 
has  made  money,  in  love  with  modem  luxury,  yet  unable  to  get 
used  to  it,  surrounding  himself  with  furniture  and  bric-a-brac 
the  use  of  which  is  a  puzzle  to  him,  always  ill-at-ease  in  his  own 
house,  in  his  own  clothes.  Be  it  love  of  luxury  or  the  tradesman's 
calculating  instinct  and  the  wish  thus  to  strengthen  his  credit,  the 
merchant  of  this  kind  often  develops  a  taste  for  show  and  gor- 
geousness  seldom  to  be  met  with  in  other  classes,  even  though  the 
whole  country  has  a  leaning  that  way.  There  are  provincial 
merchant-nabobs  who  have  splendid  apartments  where  they  do  not 
live,  sumptuous  drawing-rooms  which  are  opened  only  to  strangers, 
plate  and  china  which  they  don't  use,  richly  appointed  beds  to 
which  they  prefer  rugs  and  divans,  after  the  old  Russian  fashion. 

There  is  nothing  in  the  Russian  "guilds"  that  recalls  the 
"third  estate"  of  Western  Europe,  with  its  stirring  spirit,  its 
varied  information,  its  pushing,  ambition. '  There  is  scarcely  yet 
the  least  stir  of  political  or  intellectual  leaven  to  be  felt.  Until 
these  latter  years,  science  and  literature  owed  nearly  nothing  to 
the  middle  class.*  As  the  name  itself  {kuptsy)  indicates,  there 
has  been  in  Russia  until  now  only  a  counting-house  middle 
class,  representing  trade  and  industry,  swayed  by  an  exclusively 
mercantile,  conservative,  and  routine-ridden  spirit.  Most  of  the 
professions  commonly  called  "liberal"  were  almost  as  much 
wanting  in  the  Russia  of  Peter  I.  and  Catherine  II.  as  in  the 
Moscovia  of  the  Ivans  and  Vassilis.     No  lawyers,  no  physicians, 

'  Because  Russian  society  is  not  based  on  feudalism.  We  never  can 
have  a  "third  estate  "  like  that  of  Western  Europe,  because  there  it  was 
the  embodiment  of  a  continuous  protest  and  struggle  against  feudal  arro- 
gance and  oppression.     In  Russia  there  is  nothing  for  it  to  protest  against. 

*The  only  two  exceptions  are,  in  the  first  half  of  the  present  century, 
the  provincial  poets,  Koltsdf  and  Nikitin,  twins  in  gifts,  inspiration,  and 
origin  ;  one  a  tradesman  in  a  small  way,  the  other  a  mere  fniish4chan\n  of 
the  poorest  class.  Some  writers  and  scientists  risen  from  that  class  might 
be  quoted  at  the  present  time. 


SOCIAL  HIERARCHY :    TOWNS  AND    URBAN  CLASSES.      343 

no  engineers,  no  writers,  no  professors,  not  even  notaries  or  attor- 
neys ; — nothing  but  clerks  and  scriveners,  uneducated,  and  as 
unlike  as  possible,  as  to  personal  dignity  and  social  standing,  to 
their  congeners  of  the  West.  There  could  not  be  many  lawyers 
in  a  country  where,  until  1865,  the  procedure  was  secret  and  writ- 
ten, while  legislation  was  a  chaos,  and  justice  an  object  of  traffic, 
where  functions  of  all  orders  were  performed  by  the  same  class  of 
functionaries,  frequently  by  the  same  persons,  unqualified  by  pro- 
fessional training  or  the  choice  of  a  specialty.  The  Russia  of  the 
first  half  of  the  nineteenth  century  was,  in  this  respect,  behind 
the  France  of  the  sixteenth. 

The  reforms  of  Emperor  Alexander  II.,  especially  the  judicial 
reform,  will  help  fill  this  gap,  by  creating  pursuits  and  professions 
requiring  serious  intellectual  culture  and  providing  for  it  mani- 
fold and  honorable  openings.  The  universities  and  the  progress 
made  in  instruction,  the  railroads  and  greater  rapidity  of  inter- 
course, the  widening  of  commerce  and  industry  work  in  the  same 
direction.  The  result  will  be  a  new  middle  class,  liberal,  wide- 
awake, with  varied  aptitudes.  But  this  future,  truly  Russian 
middle  class  will  have  to  be  looked  for  outside  of  all  official  rolls. 
It  is  being  recruited  from  all  classes,  among  the  sons  of  merchants 
and  still  more  of  the  nobility.  This  middle  class,  which  is,  sooner 
or  later,  to  be  the  directing  class,  will  grow  up  outside  of  all  class 
distinctions,  and  will  have  little  trouble  in  overcoming  birth-preju- 
dices, because,  contrary  to  appearances,  they  have  never  been 
very  strong  in  Russia. 

The  chief  outcome  of  the  eighteenth  century  and  the  reforms 
of  Peter  and  Catherine  was  the  formation  of  a  cultured  upper 
class,  a  nobility  brought  up  after  the  European  manner  ;  one  of 
the  chief  outcomes  of  the  nineteenth  centtury  and  the  reforms  of 
Alexander  II.  will  be  the  creation  of  a  truly  European  and  mod- 
em middle  class.  The  progress  made  in  this  direction  during  the 
last  fifty  years  is  easy  to  follow.  "  There  is  no  third  estate  in  Rus- 
sia," wrote  Madame  deStael  in  the  reign  of  Alexander  I.  ;  "  it  is 


344      "^^^  EMPIRE  OF  THE    TSARS  AND   THE  RUSSIANS. 

a  great  inconvenience  as  regards  the  progress  of  letters  and  arts, 
.  .  .  but  the  absence  of  an  intermediate  class  between  the  high 
and  the  low  makes  them  love  one  another  the  more.  The  distance 
between  the  two  extremes  appears  greater  because  there  are  no 
degrees  between  them,  but  in  reality  they  are  more  closely 
in  touch  with  each  other  for  not  being  separated  by  a  middle 
class."  *  These  words  give  matter  for  much  thought.  It  is  true 
that  the  two  extreme  classes,  the  noble  and  the  mujik,  the  lord  and 
the  serf,  were  in  close  contact,  nothing  coming  between  them  ; 
but  it  was  only  a  material  contact.  There  was  between  them 
neither  mutual  sympathy,  nor  mutual  comprehension,  nor  moral 
bond."  Between  the  people,  faithful  to  the  old  Moscovite  man- 
ners, and  the  nobility,  semi-French,  the  distance  was  the  greater 
that  there  was  nothing  to  bring  the  ends  together.  This  gap  it 
is  that  a  new  and  cultured  middle  class  is  to  fill,  belonging  to  the 
people  by  their  sympathies  and  interests,  to  modE^rn  civilization 
by  their  bringing  up. 

"  Heaven  guard  us  from  such  a  thing !  "  many  Russians  will 
exclaim.  For  many,  whether  aristocrats  or  democrats,  are  in- 
clined to  resent  the  harmless  word  burjoasia,  which  they  have 
borrowed  from  us  and  which,  in  dealing  with  the  West,  they 
misuse  in  the  strangest  manner.  Many  affect  towards  it  about 
the  same  feelings  as  the  proletarians  of  otu"  large  cities.  They 
cannot  show  sufficient  contempt  for  our  bourgeois  society  and 
civilization,  for  our  bourgeois  liberties  and  rigime.  They  are 
quite  proud  of  having  nothing  of  the  sort,  they  don't  care  to  re- 
semble us  in  this  respect.f    In  their  pretensions  to  social  imity 

•  Dix  Annies  d'Exil. 

*  Madame  de  Stael  was  right.  Her  woman's  intnition  guided  her  more 
surely  and  showed  her  the  hidden  truth  of  things  more  clearly  than  learned 
abstractions  can  do  where  living  souls  are  in  question. 

t  This  aversion  against  the  bourgeoisie  is  found  equally,  and  for  simi- 
lar reasons,  among  the  small  Slavic  nations.  True,  with  most  of  the  latter, 
it  is  accounted  for  by  the  fact  that  the  bourgeoisie  of  their  cities  consists 
mostly  of  Jews  and  Germans — a  remark  which  applies  in  no  small  measure 
to  the  greater  part  of  wealthy  Rtissian  cities. 


SOCIAL  HIERARCHY :    TOWNS  AND    URBAN  CLASSES.      345 

and  homogeneousness,  in  their  systematic  antipathy  against  class 
distinctions,  they  look  on  the  bourgeoisie  as  on  some  sort  of  a 
new  caste,  or  an  oligarchy  hostile  to  the  people,  not  perceiving 
that  the  fusion  of  classes  must  necessarily  produce  a  new,  inter- 
mediate class,  independent  of  all  caste  prejudices  and  alone  capa- 
ble of  realizing  that  moral  unity  of  a  nation  which  they  have  so 
much  at  heart ;  that  this  alone  can  put  an  end  to  the  social  dual- 
ism, the  moral  schism  which,  ever  since  Peter  the  Great,  has  been 
one  of  Russia's  principal  diseases  and  which  survives  the  abolition 
of  privileges  and  the  progress  of  equality.  Then  only  this  nation, 
once  divided  against  itself  and  even  now  cut  into  two  halves, 
both  powerless  through  their  separation,  will  be  in  a  position  to 
give  Europe  the  measure  of  its  genius. 


BOOK  VI. 
NOBILITY   AND    TCHIN. 


CHAPTER  I. 


/The  Nobles  and  the  Peasants,  Personifying  the  Two  Rnssias,  Appear  Like 
/  Two  Different  Nations — By  its  Origin  and  Manner  of  Recruiting,  the 

\  "BMs&x&nDvoridinstvo  Differs  from  all  Corresponding  Institutions  in  West- 
» em  Europe — Personal  and  Hereditary  Nobility — GreatNumber  of  the  No- 
bles— Russian  Titles — The  Descendants  of  Rurik  and  Guedimin — Why 
this  High-bom  Nobility  does  not  Form  an  Aristocracy — Constitution  of 
the  Russian  Family — Equal  Division  among  the  Males — Political  Con- 
sequences of  this  System — Attempts  to  Introduce  Entails  and  Primo- 
geniture. 

The  noble  and  the  peasant ;    the  former   landlord  and  the 
former  serf.     These  two  men,  these  two  classes,  even  now  em- 
body two  different  Russias  :  one  modem,  the  European  Russia  of 
Peter  and  the  reforming  emperors  ;  the  other  old-fashioned,  the 
Moscovite,  semi- Asiatic  or  semi-Oriental  Russia  of  the  old  tsars. 
/);     Between  the  noble  and  the  peasant  serfdom  was,  up  to  Alex- 
Vander  II.,  a  material  bond;  a  moral  one  it  never  was.      This 
/  secular  bond  once  broken,  the  former  landlord  and  former  serf 
found  themselves  almost  as  closely  linked  together  as  they  were 
before  by  the  soil  and  the  demands  of  rural  life,  and  nearly  as 
widely  separated  by  intellect,  tendencies,  and  manners.     For  the 
difference  between  them  lay  not  merely  in  the  degree  of  culture  ; 
it  lay  in  the  principle,  in  the  very   nature  of  the  civilization. 
Therefore  it  is  that  now,  as  well  as  before  emancipation,  the  dis- 

346 


NOBILITY  AND  TCHIN.  347 

tance  betwixt  them  is  so  great  that  they  appear  .to  the  foreign 
observer  to  form  not  so  much  two  classes  as  two  separate  nationsl 

Of  these  two  men,  the  mujik  and  his  former  master,  one  is 
almost  an  entire  stranger  to  Europe,  the  other  is  almost  at  home 
with  her.  France,  Germany,  Italy,  have  often  harbored  the 
latter  as  guest ;  he  cultivates  them,  as  traveller,  man  of  the  world, 
and  pleasure-seeker.  Western  Europe  knows  the  Russian  noble, 
and  is  utterly  ignorant  of  what  Russian  nobility  is.  In  this 
respect  the  highest  order  of  Russian  society  is  scarcely  better 
known,  better  understood  of  Europe  than  Russian  peasantry  ;  we 
know  neither  what  their  functions  have  been  in  the  past,  nor  what 
part  they  play  in  the  present,  and  are  therefore  not  qualified  to 
augur  their  future.  We  do  not  know  what  place  the  nobility 
occupies  in  the  nation  and  in  the  state,  what  prerogatives  are  con- 
ceded it  by  custom  and  law,  what  vista  the  evolution  of  Russia 
opens  before  it.  There  is  much  babbling  in  Europe  of  aristocracy 
and  democracy  ;  even  in  France,  aroused  at  last  to  some  curiosity 
concerning  foreign  nations,  the  latter  are  often  questioned  on  the 
point  by  parties  and  schools,  which  like  to  bring  forward,  in  the 
form  of  instances  more  or  less  faithfully  reported,  arguments  in 
favor  of  this  or  that  thesis,  usually  settled  beforehand.  What 
lessons  can  Europe  learn  from  Russia  in  this  matter  ?  Towards 
which  side  leans  that  society,  in  so  many  ways  dissimilar  from 
the  French  ?  Can  it  long  hold  its  footing  on  the  declivity  down 
which  all  the  West  gradually  slides  ?  Is  there  in  Russia  an  aris- 
tocratic force  capable  of  becoming  one  day  a  political  lever,  a  sup- 
port to  the  throne,  and  a  restraint  on  the  people  ?  Such  questions 
may  appear  premature,  but  they  will  naturally  occur  to  minds 
uneasy  about  the  ftiture  of  Europe  and  civilization. 

The  Russian  nobility  {dvorihnstvo)  has  neither  the  same  origin 
nor  the  same  traditions  as  what  is  called  by  that  name  in  Western 
Europe.  The  dvorid,nstvo — "the  hereditary  cultured  class"  a 
Russian  writer  with  aristocratic  tendencies  defines  it — ^is  an  insti- 
tution special  to  Russia,  unknown  to  Europe,  unique  of  its  kind. 


348       7'^^   EMPIRE   OF   THE    TSARS  AND   THE  RUSSIANS. 

Two  things  especially  are  distinctive  of  it :  in  the  first  place  it 
never  was  anything  but  a  tool  of  the  ruling  power,  being  literally 
nothing  but  the  men  in  the  service  of  the  state  united  into  a 
body  ;  in  the  second  place  it  has  always  been  open  to  all  and, 
being  continually  renovated  by  influx  from  below,  it  has  been 
preserved  from  any  tendency  towards  exclusiveness,  all  caste 
spirit. 

Thus  the  Russian  nobility  is  admitted  by  its  most  serious 
paneg^Tists  to  have  no  counterpart  in  Western  Europe  ;  some  even 
would  fain  say  no  antecedent  in  history.  It  is  only  when  they 
look  at  their  country  through  foreign  glasses  and  allow  them- 
selves to  be  taken  in  by  an  entirely  external  likeness,  that  certain 
Russians  forget  their  national  traditions  over  their  European 
training  and  g^ve  themselves  airs  as  English  lords  or  German 
Herren.  If  we  render  the  term  dvorihnstvo  by  those  of  noblesse, 
adel,  nobility,  it  is  only  from  lack  of  equivalents  in  the  lan- 
guages as  well  as  in  the  institutions  of  the  West.  The  term 
which  designates  officially  the  highest  class  in  the  state  at  the 
same  time  tells  the  story  of  its  origfin.  The  Russian  word  dvori- 
anin  means  "a  man  of  the  court"  and  might  be  translated 
*'  courtier  "  had  not  this  word  taken  an  entirely  diflferent  sense.* 
It  appears  that  originally  the  dvorianln  was  an  officer  or  dignitary 
of  the  Moscovite  court,  more  or  less  analogous  to  the  chamber- 
lains of  Western  Europe.  I^ater  on,  this  term  was  extended  to  all 
who  were  in  the  personal  service  of  the  sovereign  or,  what 
amounted  to  the  same,  of  the  state.  The  dvorihnstvo  has  kept, 
through  history,  the  stamp  of  its  origin  ;  it  is  a  court  nobility,  a 
serving  nobility,  which,  in  our  days  as  of  old,  can  be  acquired  by 
the  tchin,  i.  e. ,  a  g^ven  grade  or  rank  in  the  army  or  administration. 

* Dvorianin,  plnral  dvoridnii,  from  dvor,  "court,"  also  "yard,"  with 
all  the  meanings  attaching  to  these  words  and  a  few  more  besides.  Thus  it 
is  thaidvdmik,  " porter,  janitor,"  and dvordvyii,  the  "  household  serfs,"  are 
words  derived  from  the  same  radical  as  that  designating  the  national  nobility. 
May  there  not  be  some  affinity  between  the  ideas  represented  as  well  as 
between  the  words  ? 


NOBILITY  AND    TCHIN.  349 

Russian  legislature  distinguishes  two  sorts  of  nobility  :  trans- 
missible or  "hereditary,"  and  "personal,"  i.  <?.,  not  descending 
from  the  father  to  his  children.  This  exactly  renders  the  peculiar 
character  of  the  Russian  hierarchy.  The  dvorihnstvo  being  only 
the  servants  of  the  state,  it  became  necessary,  when  the  compli- 
cated bureaucracy  of  the  West  was  introduced  in  Russia,  to  draw  a 
distinction  between  high  oflSces  and  inferior  ones.  Hence  the  crea- 
tion of  two  nobilities  for  the  use  of  men  in  public  service.  To 
the  subaltern  this  title  of  "  personal  dvorianln  "  insured  the  rights 
of  the  freeman,  in  a  country  where  only  the  noble  or  functionary 
had  any  recognized  rights.  In  point  of  fact  he  has  nothing  that 
the  privileged  town  classes  do  not  have.  His  children  enter  the 
rubric  of  "  honorary  citizens,"  i.  e.,  hereditary  town  notables,  and 
really  enjoy  the  same  rights  as  their  father,  whose  nobility  they 
have  not  inherited.  The  title  therefore  is  an  empty  one  and  its 
suppression  would  make  no  change  in  the  social  hierarchy. 

Only  hereditary  nobility  deserves  attention  as  possessing  real 
value.     Like  personal  nobility,  it  has  for  centuries  been  open  to 
all.     For  over  a  hundred  years,  all  through  the  eighteenth  century 
and  the  first  portion  of  the  nineteenth,  from  Peter  the  Great  to  the 
close  of  the  reign  of  Alexander  I.,  hereditary  nobility  belonged 
by  right  to  every  army  oflScer  and  every  civilian  of  corresponding 
grade ;  it  was  won  with  the  first  epaulet,  with  the  grade  of  en- 
sign, which  is  inferior  to  that  of  sub-lieutenant.     It  is  easy  to  see 
what  a  nobility  must  have  been  to  which  the  door  was  so  wide 
and  the  threshold  so  low.     In  order  to  raise  its  level  somewhgt^^-i 
Alexander  I.  in  1822,  his  brother  Nicolas  in  1845,  and  Alexanderl\\ 
II.  in  1854,  successively  heightened  by  several  degrees  the  thres-  \^ 
hold  ofthe  entrance  to  hereditary  nobility.  UnderAlexanderII.it  """ 
was  open  only  to  colonels  or  civilians  bearing  the  title  of  "Actual 
State  Councillor"  (Fourth  class).    Under  Alexander  III.  the  no- 
bility has  at  last  succeeded  in  doing  away  with  ennoblement  by 
grade  and  service.     Besides  the  great  gate  of  the  tckin,  there  were 
sundry  side  entrances  into  hereditary  nobility  ;  certain  imperial 


350      THE  EMPIRE   OF   THE   TSARS  AND    THE  RUSSIANS. 

orders  used  to  ennoble  ex  officio.  The  monarch  still  has  the 
faculty,  which  he  seldom  uses,  of  conferring  nobility  by  his 
sovereign  pleasure. 

The  first  result  of  such  a  system  is  naturally  the  great  number 
of  nobles,  accompanied  by  generally  straitened  circumstances,  lack 
of  education,  and  the  not  very  high  standing  of  a  great  many  among 
them.  In  European  Russia  alone,  statistics  give  about  600,000 
souls  as  the  figure  for  hereditary,  and  not  less  than  350,000 
for  personal  dvoricinstvo.  There  is  enough  to  raise  an  army  com- 
posed entirely  of  nobles.  The  consequence  is,  nobles  are  found 
everywhere,  on  all  steps  of  the  social  ladder,  the  top  of  which 
should  alone  be  reserved  to  them.  It  is  there,  rather  than  in 
^Toffidal  city  burgherdom,  that  the  equivalent  of  the  European 
bourgeoisie  might  be  looked  for.  ' '  What  is  your  nobility  ?  ' '  once 
asked  one  of  my  fellow-travellers  of  a  justice  of  the  peace  at 
whose  table  we  sat,  on  the  banks  of  the  Volga.  "  Our  nobility," 
replied  the  host,  "why,  they  are  my  guests — we  all  that  are 
here."  This  reply  could  often  be  given  in  Russia  and  abroad  too, 
wherever  many  Russians  come  together.  The  nobles  are  all  that 
are  not  peasant,  priest,  or  merchant — tradesman  or  shopkeeper ; 
all  the  people  you  meet  in  society,  all  those  of  a  certain  culture, 
in  town  or  country.  In  this  respect  one  might  even  still  almost 
say  :  "  In  Russia,  the  nobility  is  everybody." 

From  the  obscure  background  formed  by  this  nobiliary  plebs, 
naturally  stand  out  a  certain  number  of  families,  of  which  some 
shine  with  a  lustre  that  pierces  through  the  gloom  of  ages,  back 
to  the  days  of  old  Moscovia,  while  others  have  been  more  recently 
brought  into  prominence  by  brilliant  services.  Such  families, 
such  "houses  "  there  are  in  Russia  as  in  most  countries  that  have 
a  past.  The  Russian  language  has,  to  designate  them,  a  word 
peculiar  to  itself ;  it  calls  them  collectively  * '  the  znat ' '  (from 
the  verb  zruLti,  "  to  know  ").  These  are,  irrespective  of  titles  or 
antiquity  of  race,  the  illustrious  or  renowned  families  who  have 
held,  down  to  our  days,  a  high  rank  in  the  state  or  society.     In 


NOBILITY  AND    TCHIN.  35 1 

this  highest  nobility,  or,  more  correctly,  in  this  topmost  social 
layer,  there  are  titled  families  of  ancient  pedigree  or  recent  extrac- 
tion, but  there  are  also  untitled  families  whose  nobility  and 
splendor  can  be  traced  to  the  times  of  the  old  tsars.  This  nobility 
will  probably  be  the  only  one  to  survive  the  gradual  fading  out  of 
the  dvorihnstvo,  as  the  latter  has  nothing,  either  in  name  or  form,  or 
in  the  country's  memory,  to  keep  it  permanently  distinct  from  the 
mass  of  the  nation.*  The  bulk  of  nobles  is  not  set  apart  by  any 
external  sign,  there  is  nothing  to  proclaim  their  quality,  they  have 
no  title  to  show  but  an  inscription  in  the  registers  of  their  province. 

There  are  in  Russia  several  sorts  of  titles,  and  something  like 
a  nobiliary  hierarchy,  but  this  is  an  importation  from  the  West,  a 
recently  borrowed  thing.  To  the  Moscovites  as  to  the  other  Slavs, 
all  these  designations  of  dukes,  counts,  barons,  were  unknown, 
for  the  reason  that  they  never  had  anything  like  feudalism,  no 
duchies  and  counties,  vassals  of  one  another  and  of  the  central 
power.  Old  Russia  knew  nothing  of  all  these  gradations  ; 
indeed  she  did  not  know  much  even  of  hereditary  qualifications  ; 
herein  again  the  Russian  dvorihnstvo  differed  entirely  from  the 
nobility  of  Western  Europe.  There  was  but  one  exception,  and 
that  confirmed  the  rule  :  it  was  in  favor  of  the  collateral  branches 
of  the  reigning  dynasty. 

*  Many  Russians,  when  abroad,  add  to  their  names  the  French  prefix 
de  or  the  German  von.  There  is  nothing  of  the  sort  in  their  own  language. 
Russian  names  often  take  the  form  of  a  genitive,  or  rather  a  nominal  adjec- 
tive :  Davydof  from  David,  Semidnof  from  Semi6n  (Simon)  ;  but  far  from 
belonging  specially  to  the  nobility,  such  names  are  met  with  among  the 
priests,  the  merchants,  the  peasantry.  If  there  is  any  kind  of  distinction  in 
this  matter,  it  lies  not  in  the  family  names,  but  in  the  desinence  vitch 
(feminine,  vna),  which  the  Russians  add  to  their  father's  given  name,  which 
they  then  use  as  a  patronymic  :  Alexander  Petrdvitch,  Alexandra  Petrovna. 
In  old-time  Moscovia  this  now  almost  universal  desinence  was  used  only  by 
persons  of  some  standing.  Only  one  merchant  family,  which  formed  in 
itself  a  sort  of  privileged  class,  the  Str6gonofs  (now  counts),  were  entitled  to 
it.  To  this  day  the  desinence  <?/" instead  of  dvitch  is  used  in  this  way  for  the 
lower  classes :  you  say  Ivan  Petrdf,  Alexis  Ivdnof.  This  is  probably  the 
origin  of  the  many  names  in  of. 


352      THE  EMPIRE   OF   THE    TSARS  AND    THE  RUSSIANS. 

The  descendants  of  the  kniazes^  the  appanage-princes,  con- 
tinued to  bear  the  title  after  the  incorporation  of  their  princi- 
palities into  that  of  Moscow.  All  other  dignities  or  distinctions, 
especially  that  of  boyhr,  were  conferred  directly  by  the  sovereign 
and  only  for  a  lifetime.  It  was  only  when  brought  into  contact 
with  Europe  and  on  annexing  provinces  that  had  long  been  sub- 
ject to  Teutonic  influences,  that  Russia  appropriated  some  of  the 
nobiliary  denominations  produced  by  feudalism.  So  she  made 
counts  and  later  on  barons,  but  had  to  borrow  foreign  names  for 
these  imitative  creations.*  Peter  the  Great  and  his  successors 
began  to  vie  with  Western  monarchs  in  conferring  hereditary  titles. 
They  were  not  as  lavish,  though,  with  these  distinctions  as  other 
sovereigns,  and  the  number  of  families  bearing  foreign  titles  is 
comparatively  small.  A  hundred  or  so  of  counts,!  some  fifteen 
princes,  and  a  few  more  barons,  the  latter  mostly  financial  men, — 
such  is  the  approximate  number  of  titles  created  by  imperial 
diploma.  They  all  are  naturally  of  more  or  less  recent  date,  few 
going  back  a  century,  and  these  families  do  not  enjoy  any  high 
degree  of  popularity  and  consideration.  There  are,  side  by  side 
with  them,  others,  more  ancient,  whose  names  are  suflSdently 
illustrious  not  to  need  the  glamour  of  title.  The  Nar^shkins,  for 
instance,  have  none,  and  appear  to  deem  it  an  honor  to  dispense 
with  one. 

One  thing  strikes  you  in  the  Russian  znat,  that  of  St.  Peters- 
burgh  especially  :  it  is  the  great  number  of  families  of  foreign 
extraction.  Probably  one  half  of  this  court  aristocracy  comes 
from  abroad  ;  the  blood  in  their  veins  is  Tatar,  Gruzin  (Georgian), 
Greek,  Valachian,  Lithuanian,  Polish,  Swedish,  German,  even 

♦  Graf  for  "  count,"  and  Baron.  The  old  title  kniaz  is  the  only  Slavic 
and  rational  one.  I  cannot  see  why  we  translate  "grand-duke,"  and  not 
"  grand-prince,"  the  ancient  title  veliki-kniaz,  formerly  borne  by  the 
sovereigns  of  Kief,  Vladfmir,  Moscow,  and  now  by  the  members  of  the 
imperial  family. 

t  There  are  said  to  have  been,  from  Boriss  Sherem^tief  in  1706  to 
General  Totleben  in  1879,  157  creations  of  counts ;  but  many  left  no 
posterity.    The  Emperor  Alexander  11.  alone  created  over  twenty. 


NOBILITY  AND    TCHIN.  353 

French  and  English.  All  the  tribes  subject  to  the  imperial  scep- 
tre, all  the  adjoining  nations,  have  contributed  their  contingent 
to  the  dvorihnstvo.  Thus  the  most  exalted  class  is  the  least 
national  of  all,  in  origin  as  in  manners  and  breeding.  Here  lies 
another  source  of  weakness,  another  cause  for  its  lack  of  influence 
and  authority. 

In  the  midst  of  all  these  families  of  doubtfiil  origin  and  date, 
the  kniazes,  the  lineal  descendants  of  the  ancient  Russian  rulers, 
occupy  a  separate  place.  In  the  state,  founded  and  so  long 
governed  by  their  forefathers,  these  scions  of  the  house  of  Rurik 
represent  a  native  aristocracy,  which,  in  virtue  of  its  secular  glory, 
claims  high  consideration.  No  aristocracy  in  Europe  boasts  a 
loftier  and  longer  pedigree.  ' '  In  Russia, ' '  once  said  M.  de  Talley- 
rand, '  *  they  are  all  princes. ' '  This  opinion  is  still  widely  spread 
in  Western  Europe.  Yet  nothing  can  be  falser.  Setting  aside  the 
foreign  intruders,  and  the  families  deriving  their  nobility  from  all 
sorts  of  sources,  the  number  of  national  princely  families,  in  that 
immense  empire,  scarcely  exceeds  sixty .  *  Nearly  forty  write  them- 
selves from  Rurik,  the  founder,  and  from  Vladimir,  the  apostle  of 
the  empire ;  they  are  the  representatives  of  the  d3ntiasty  which 
reigned  from  the  ninth  down  to  the  end  of  the  sixteenth  century. 
This  house,  probably  the  most  prolific  sovereign  race  known  to 
history,  had  as  many  as  two  hundred  different  branches  a  century 
or  two  ago.  Many  have  no  living  scions  left  ;  others,  the  Tatish- 
tchefs  for  instance,  have  dropped  or  lost  the  title.  Another  group, 
composed  of  four  Russian  and  four  Polish  families,  comes  from  a 
no  less  illustrious  stock  and  nearly  as  national  in  the  eyes  of  the 
Russians :  they  are  the  descendants  of  Guedimin  and  the  ancient 
sovereign  house  of  I^ithuania,  known  in  Europe  tmder  the  name  of 
the  Yagellons,  and  which,  before  it  ascended  the  throne  of  Poland, 
at  one  time  ruled  the  whole  of  Western  Russia.     From  Rurik  and 

*  We  mean  here  only  .the  genuinely  Russian  families,  not  those  who, 
by  their  nationality,  belong  to  the  alien  dependencies  of  the  empire,  espe- 
cially the  Caucasus,  where  Gr&zia  (Georgia)  alone  has  contributed  quite  a 
bevy  of  native  princes. 


354       T'Z/y?  EMPIRE   OF   THE    TSARS  AND   THE  RUSSIANS. 

the  first  Russian  dynasty  are  descended  the  Dolgordkis,the  Baridtin- 
skys,  the  Obol^nskys,  the  Gortchakbfe,  the  Mossilskys  ;  from  Gue- 
dimin  and  the  Lithuanian  dynasty,  the  Khovdnskys,  the  Galitsins, 
the  Kurdkins,  the  Trubetskbys  in  Russia,  the  Czartoryskis  and  the 
Sanguszkos  in  Poland.  To  this  double  line,  issued  from  the  oldest 
native  rulers,  should  be  added  seven  or  eight  families  descended 
from  Tatar,  Tcherkess,  and  Gnizin  chieftains,  formerly  admitted 
into  the  ranks  of  Russian  kniazes,  and  most  of  whom — the 
Tcherk^kys,  the  Meshtch6rskys,  the  Bagrations — bear  his- 
torical names. 

A  mere  roll-call  shows  that  these  Russian  kniazes  are  not 
behind  any  nobility  in  Europe  in  antiquity  and  renown  ;  to  this 
day  there  is  none  that  can  show  more  men  of  distinction.  Never- 
theless, in  all  of  these  houses  of  quasi-royal  blood,  by  whose  side 
rank  many  old  boyhr  families, — in  all  this  brilliant  national  nobility, 
there  are  not  the  elements  for  a  political  aristocracy,  there  are  not 
the  materials  to  make,  say  a  House  of  Lords,  a  house  of  hereditary 
boyhrs.  There  is  a  twofold  reason  for  this  disqualification  :  one 
lies  in  the  historical  constitution  of  Russian  society  ;  the  other  and 
main  reason  lies  in  the  constitution  of  the  Russian  family  itself. 

Equality  among  all  the  children — equal  rights,  title  common 
to  all — is  the  law  of  the  Russian  family,  as  well  that  of  the  plain 
dvorianin  as  that  of  the  kniaz,  the  merchant,  and  the  mujik.  This 
democratical  principle,  always  staunchly  maintained  by  the  Rus- 
sian nobility,  stifled  in  the  sprouting  such  germs  of  aristocracy  as 
sank  here  and  there  into  the  soil.  In  these  princely  houses,  the 
recipients  of  the  blood  of  Rurik  and  Guedimin,  as  in  the  poorest 
nobleman's  house,  there  is  no  "  eldest  son,"  no  "head  of  the  fam- 
ily," as  far  as  any  special  rights  go.  The  father's  possessions  are 
divided  equally  among  the  sons  ;  the  ancestral  title  is  transmitted 
to  all  without  distinction,  and,  as  it  is  the  only  property  that  is  not 
impaired  by  successive  partitions,  it  frequently  is  the  only  inheri- 
tance that  remains  to  them.  Hence  the  frequent  debasement  of  a 
title  which,  while  belonging    to  but    few  families,  can    at  the 


NOBILITY  AND    TCHIN.  355 

same  time  belong  to  many  individuals.  By  dint  of  branching  and 
ever  more  branching  out,  many  of  these  princely  families — and 
sometimes  the  most  illustrious — end  by  forming  a  bushy  shrub, 
the  boughs  of  which  are  so  intertwined  that  they  hide  and  choke 
one  another. 

Some  of  these  houses  of  kniazes,  the  unity  and  fortune  of  which 
are  secured  neither  by  primogeniture  nor  by  the  entrance  of  the 
younger  sons  into  the  Church,  have  become  veritable  tribes  or 
clans,  with  no  bond  between  them  but  the  name  and  the  title. 
Thus  there  are  some  four  hundred  princes  and  princesses  Galitsin 
by  right  of  birth.  In  these  huge  families  grown  out  of  the  same 
trunk,  there  are  naturally,  by  the  side  of  limbs  that  spread  in 
the  sun,  blossom-crowned  and  overflowing  with  sap,  branches 
pining  away  for  want  of  air  and  nourishment  and  bare  of  foliage. 
As  early  as  in  the  sixteenth  century,  when  Rurik's  dynasty  still 
ruled,  Fletcher  remarked  that  many  kniazes  owned  no  inheritance 
save  their  title,  with  nothing  to  support  it.  ' '  There  are  so  many  of 
them  in  this  position,"  wrote  the  envoy  of  aristocratic  England, — 
"  that  these  titles  do  not  amount  to  much.  Accordingly  you  see 
princes  only  too  happy  to  serve  a  man  of  no  account  for  a  salary 
of  five  or  six  roubles  a  year."  Matters  have  not  much  improved 
with  time  and  the  multiplying  of  more  families.  At  this  very 
moment  one  meets  in  Russia  descendants  of  Rurik  and  Guedimin 
following  more  than  modest  pursuits.  In  Petersburgh  I  have  seen 
one  conduct  the  orchestra  of  a  cafe-concert ;  in  Italy  I  have  met, 
on  second-  and  third-rate  stages,  princesses  singing  under  assumed 
names,  and  I  was  told  there  had  been  princes  who  drove  cabs  and 
princesses  who  took  positions  as  lady's-maids.  Such  things 
account  for  the  fact  that  several  families  issued  from  Rurik  dropped 
their  title.  With  such  division,  such  crumbling  away  of  families 
and  fortunes,  it  were  vain  to  look  for  family  feeling  or  esprit  de  corps 
in  the  high  nobility. 

Would  you  know  whether  a  country  inclines  to  aristocracy, 
first  of  all  inquire  into  the  laws  or  customs  that  regulate  the  dis- 


356      THE  EMPIRE   OF    THE   TSARS  AND    THE  RUSSIANS, 

tribution  of  wealth.  According  to  a  remark  of  Tocqueville's,  it  is 
the  laws  on  succession  which,  by  centring,  grouping  around  a  few 
heads  first  property,  then  power,  force  aristocracy,  in  a  manner,  to 
spring  fix>m  the  soil, — or,  by  dividing,  frittering,  and  scattering 
property  and  power,  pave  the  way  for  democracy.  No^^n  the 
Russian  nobility,  the  custom  of  dividing  the  property  equally 
among  the  sons  has  always  prevailed, — that  levelling  law,  which, 
' '  passing  over  the  soil  again  and  again,  razes  the  walls  of  dwell- 
ings to  the  ground  and  pulls  down  the  enclosures  of  fields."  If 
in  Russia  the  law  of  equal  division  has  not  yet  reduced  all  the 
large  estates  into  house  lots,  destroyed  all  possibilities  of  living 
broadly,  the  reason  is  that  Russia,  so  far,  has  been  placed  in 
exceptional  economic  conditions.  It  was,  at  first,  the  immensity 
of  the  territory  ;  then  the  rapid  rise  in  the  value  of  land  owing  to 
the  opening  of  new  issues  ;  lastly,  serfdom  and  the  nobility's 
exclusive  right  to  own  ' '  inhabited  estates. ' '  In  many  a  region  the 
land  revenue  has  increased  so  fast,  in  proportion  to  the  population 
and  means  of  communication,  that  the  properties  would  double, 
treble  their  value,  sometimes  increase  it  tenfold,  in  the  space  of 
twenty  or  thirty  years.  At  this  rate,  it  was  not  impossible  for  two 
or  three  sons,  after  dividing  among  themselves  the  paternal  inheri- 
tance, to  find  themselves  each  as  rich  as  their  father  had  been  at 
their  age.'  There  was  another  cause  still,  at  least  to  all  appear- 
ance, for  large  fortunes  :  that  is  the  fact  that  property  is  divided 
only  among  the  male  children. 

The  sons,  being  those  whom  it  behooves  to  perpetuate  the 
family,  share  the  estate.  To  the  daughters  who  have  living 
brothers,  the  law  awards  an  almost  nominal  portion :  one  four- 
teenth of  the  paternal  inheritance,  at  least  of  the  real  estate.     Often 

'  In  the  present  and  for  the  future  the  true  safeguard  is  that  we  Russian 
nobles  have  been  led  by  the  late  economic  revolution  to  work,  and  to  like  it ; 
so  that  a  moderate  inheritance  becomes — what  alone  inheritances  should  be 
in  an  ideal  state  of  society — an  encouragement  and  aid  to  efiFort,  a  stepping- 
stone,  a  stirrup,  a  reserve  fund,  not  a  bed  to  lie  down  on  and  idle  away  the 
best  forces  of  manhood  and  the  few  years  given  to  use  them  in. 


NOBILITY  AND    TCHIN.  357 

they  get  only  their  marriage  outfit.  In  the  spirit  of  ancient 
civilizations,  a  wedded  and  dowered  daughter  is  put  out  of  the 
family,  A  slice  of  bread  once  cut  oflf,  in  the  popular  saying, 
does  not  belong  to  the  loaf  any  longer.  True,  the  dowry  given  to 
the  daughters  sometimes  amounts  to  more  than  what  would  be 
their  legal  share  ;  there  even  are  cases  where  the  daughters  had, 
in  this  way,  received  a  portion  as  large  or  larger  than  that  of  their 
brothers.  This  law  by  no  means  proceeds  from  contempt  of  the 
female  sex  ;  for  Russian  law,  so  niggardly  in  its  provision  for 
them,  is  in  many  ways  more  liberal  towards  women  than  the 
French  Code,  which,  with  regard  to  inheritance,  places  them  on  an 
equal  footing  with  the  men.*  If  the  Russian  Code  awards  to  the 
daughter  but  a  trifling  portion  of  her  father's  property,  it  ensures 
to  the  wife  the  free  enjoyment  and  independent  management  of 
her  own  property,  even  in  her  husband's  lifetime.  The  married 
woman  is  never,  as  in  France,  a  ward  under  her  husband's  guar- 
dianship, and,  in  a  general  way,  it  may  be  stated  here  that,  with 
regard  to  the  emancipation,  or  rather  independence,  of  women,  no 
society  in  Europe  is  more  advanced  or  more  liberal  than  the  higher 
classes  of  this  same  Russia,  whose  laws,  in  other  respects,  treat 
them  so  meanly." 

The  mode  of  succession  which  consecrates  the  inequality  of 
man  and  women,  even  still  numbers  partisans  in  the  countries 
ruled  by  the  Napoleonic  Code.  Kven  in  France  it  has  the  sympa- 
thies of  those  who  dread  the  inroads  of  democracy,  and  is  avowedly 
preferred  by  a  whole  school  of  contemporary  publicists.     I^acking 

*  It  should  be  mentioned  that  the  Emperor  Alexander  III.,  in  1882-83, 
appointed  a  commission  to  set  up  a  project  for  a  new  civil  code,  better 
adapted  to  the  conditions  of  modem  life. 

*  One  often  hears  expressions  of  blame  and  indignation  against  the  care- 
lessness, if  not  heartlessness,  of  Russian  customs  in  the  matter  of  marriage 
settlements — which  are  not  used, — from  which  it  is  inferred  that  the  Russian 
man  is  careless  of  the  interests  of  his  daughters  and  their  children.  Whereas 
the  reason  is  that  settlements  are  not  much  needed  in  a  country  where  a 
husband  has  not  the  right  of  cutting  down  a  tree  on  his  wife's  property 
against  her  will ! 


358      THE  EMPIRE  OF   THE    TSARS  AND   THE  RUSSIANS. 

primogeniture,  the  privilege  of  one  sex  over  the  other  appears  to 
them  as  a  social  guaranty,  a  way  of  protecting  the  transmission 
of  property  and  of  perpetuating  families.  This  opinion,  however, 
is  not  always  borne  out  by  the  example  of  the  Russian  nobility. 
Where  the  law  recognizes  all  the  children's  equal  right  to  the 
paternal  inheritance,  the  curtailed  portion  of  the  sons  is  re-com- 
pleted by  marriage  ;  on  the  average,  the  wife  restores  to  the  hus- 
band what  the  sister  took  from  the  brother.  If  the  division 
between  the  males  alone  cuts  up  lands  and  fortimes  less,  that 
between  all  the  children  offers  gpreater  facilities  for  reconstitut- 
ing or  rounding  them  up  by  means  of  alliances.  Nowadays, 
when  almost  the  only  factors  of  wealth  are  industry,  banking, 
and  trade,  there  is  no  other  bridge  between  the  opulence  of 
the  new-made  families  and  the  neediness  of  the  old  ones  but 
the  girls'  right  of  succession.  With  the  opposite  rigime,  power 
and  wealth  are  in  danger  of  passing  wholesale  to  a  ruling  class 
of  parvenus. 

The  exclusive  division  of  property  between  the  males  has,  from 
a  conservative  point  of  view,  another  disadvantage,  which  must 
make  itself  specially  felt  in  Russia  :  it  disturbs  the  balance  of  for- 
tunes and  the  relative  position  of  families  more  quickly,  in  a  man- 
ner more  subject  to  chance  than  the  equal  division  between  all  the 
chiMren.  Two  fathers,  owning  equal  fortunes  and  having  an  equal 
number  of  children,  leave  their  male  descendants  in  very  different 
plight  according  as  they  happen  to  have  more  sons  or  more 
daughters.  On  the  whole,  the  Russian  custom  does  not  seem  to 
foster  aristocratic  influences  any  more  than  the  French,  seemingly 
more  democratic,  custom.  However,  public  opinion  in  Russia 
leans  so  much  in  favor  of  the  independence  of  women,  that  legis- 
lation or  custom  may  very  possibly  in  the  near  future  refuse  to 
sanction  any  longer  the  curtailing  of  those  children's  birthright 
who  are  by  nature  less  apt  to  make  a  fortune  for  themselves,  and 
then  the  equality  of  the  sexes  would  prevail  in  the  North  as  it 
does  in  France. 


NOBILITY  AND   TCHIN.  359 

From  the  day  -when  they  began  to  associate  with  the  nobilities 
of  Western  Europe,  the  Russian  dvorihnstvo  understood  that,  with 
the  succession  laws  as  they  stood,  there  could  be  no  real  aris- 
tocracy. Then  some  of  the  descendants  of  kniazes  and  boyhrs  at- 
tempted to  implant  in  their  country  the  foreign  custom  of  entail. 
Singularly  enough  it  was  one  of  the  least  aristocratically  minded 
of  sovereigns,  Peter  the  Great,  who  was  the  first  to  start  this  inno- 
vation. Was  it  done  merely  to  imitate  the  West  and  better  to 
assimilate  Moscovia  to  Europe  ?  Was  the  object  really  to  place 
between  the  people  and  the  throne  an  exalted  and  influential 
nobility  ?  Such  views  fit  ill  with  the  conduct  of  the  monarch  who 
made  all  rank  in  the  state  dependent  on  the  grade  in  the  state 
service.  The  most  likely  explanation  is  that  he  wished,  by  the 
help  of  this  new  loan  from  Europe,  to  secure  to  his  own  country, 
then  just  thrown  open  to  civilization,  a  rich  and  well  informed, 
consequently  a  European  and  civilized  class.  As  instituted  by 
Peter,  nothing  could  be  more  manifestly  overdone  and  so  mani- 
festly opposed  to  the  national  customs.  In  order  to  give  the  new 
institution  some  chance  of  life,  the  first  thing  to  do  was  to  abolish 
and  then  transform  it.  By  an  ukctz  (decree)  of  17 14  all  the  landed 
estates  belonging  to  the  nobility  were  made  subject  to  entail,  or, 
more  correctly,  were  to  pass  to  one  single  heir.  Personal  property, 
at  that  time  amounting  to  very  little  in  Russia,  alone  remained  at 
the  free  disposal  of  the  dvorianln  during  his  lifetime,  and  alone 
was  to  be  divided  among  his  children  at  his  death. 

This  system  differed  from  that  in  force  in  Western  Europe  in 
one  essential  point.  Instead  of  ensuring  the  paternal  estate  to  the 
eldest  son,  Peter  the  Great  gave  the  father  the  faculty  to  appoint 
his  heir.  This  entail  without  primogeniture  introduced  into  the 
family  an  autocratic  element :  the  private  succession  law  seemed 
copied  from  the  law  on  succession  to  the  throne,  which  Peter,  in 
memory — or  in  defiance — of  his  son  Alexis,  left  to  the  choice  of  the 
sovereign.  Such  a  system  could  hardly  produce  better  consequences 
in  private  than  in  public  life.     This  sort  of  artificial  primogeniture 


360      THE  EMPIRE  OP  THE   TSARS  AND   THE  RUSSIANS. 

did  not  work  well,  as  it  made  the  succession  to  depend  on  the 
paternal  arbitrary  pleasure  and  not  on  the  chance  of  birth.  Peter's 
ukciz  was  revoked  as  early  as  1730,  having  been,  during  its  brief 
existence,  an  occasion  of  endless  trouble  in  families.  The  old 
national  custom  of  equal  division  was  restored,  and  entails,  when 
they  were  once  more  authorized,  had  to  be  made  in  favor  of  the 
eldest  sons,  all  the  way  down  the  line,  as  in  England  and  Germany.* 

Under  these  new  conditions,  entails  have  not  yet  become  pop- 
ular with  the  Russian  nobility.  Notwithstanding  the  favor  with 
which  they  are  apparently  regarded  in  some  high  social  regions, 
their  number  as  yet  is  very  small.  It  was  of  little  use  that  an 
ukhz  of  the  Emperor  Nicolas,  dated  1845,  granted  to  all  nobles  the 
right  of  establishing  one  or  more  entails :  the  nobility  never 
availed  themselves  to  any  extent  of  the  prerogative.  The  high 
value  of  such  entailed  estates  demanded  by  the  law  only  in  part 
accounts  for  the  abstention.  According  to  the  terms  of  the  ukhz  of 
1845,  the  land  thus  set  apart  must  be  entirely  free  from  mortgage, 
peopled  with  at  least  2,000  peasants,  and  bring  an  tmencumbered 
yearly  income  of  not  less  than  12,000  roubles.  Thus  regulated, 
the  institution  was  within  the  reach  of  only  the  very  wealthy  ;  but 
then,  to  be  of  some  political  efficiency,  an  entail  should  always 
represent  something  big  ;  else  it  would  be  to  society  only  a  useless 
and  cumbersome  sort  of  mortmain.  The  chief  obstacle  lies  in  the 
national  custom  and  tradition  and  in  the  democratic  instincts  of 
the  nation.  The  Russian  spirit  shows  itself  in  this  respect  very 
diflFerent  from  the  Polish  as  well  as  the  German  spirit,  which 
latter,  in  the  Baltic  provinces  subject  to  Russia,  has  hitherto  suc- 
ceeded in  affording  predominance  to  its  aristocratic  propensities. 

'  In  the  succession  law  as  it  now  stands  there  is  a  provision  which,  if 
not  exactly  equivalent  to  entail,  nearly  approximates  it  in  spirit.  A 
landholder  cannot  dispose  by  will  of  landed  property  that  has  come  to 
him  or  her  by  inheritance,  but  only  of  such  as  he  or  she  may  have  ac- 
quired by  purchase.  As,  however,  there  is  no  law  preventing  landhold- 
ers to  dispose  of  their  patrimony  in  their  lifetime,  they  have  the  resource 
of  selling  them  or  alienating  them  by  deed  of  gift  in  favor  of  any 
chosen  heir. 


NOBILITY  AND    TCHIN.  361 

There  are,  indeed,  partisans  of  the  right  of  primogeniture — in 
theory — who,  from  the  fear  of  breeding  discord  between  their  sons, 
do  not  dare  to  choose  an  heir  from  amongst  them.  I  am  acquainted 
with  a  nobleman,  the  owner  of  vast  estates,  and  infatuated  with 
English  institutions,  yet  who,  having  three  sons,  and  being  un- 
willing to  rob  any  of  them,  divided  his  property  between  them, 
entaiHng  each  lot. 

Notwithstanding  such  examples  and  the  encouragements  given 
by  a  certain  world,  the  custom  of  entails  has  remained  in  Russia 
an  exotic  plant  which  does  not  seem  inclined  to  spread  very  fast. 
Such  as  it  exists  to-day,  in  a  limited  number  of  families  in  whom 
the  others  acknowledge  no  superiority,  this  foreign  importation 
cannot  have  the  political  effects  which,  in  other  countries,  justify 
its  existence.*  In  Russia  it  is  simply  inconvenient  economically 
and  morally — a  piece  of  public  wealth  withdrawn  from  circulation 
and  the  wealth  of  a  privileged  few  artificially  insured  against  the 
punishment  due  to  improvidence  or  vice.  The  Russian  dvorihnstvo, 
deprived,  in  the  case  of  the  great  majority  of  its  members,  of  any 
legal  protection  against  the  competition  of  the  other  classes,  cannot, 
by  merely  concentrating  property  and  perpetuating  it,  insure  to 
itself  the  hereditary  authority  and  independence  which  go  to  the 
making  of  genuine  aristocracies,  f 

*  In  Russia  proper  there  were  lately,  I  am  assured,  not  forty  entailed  es- 
tates. In  the  old  Polish  provinces,  the  government  has  itself  founded,  by 
means  of  crown  demesnes  and  confiscated  estates,  small  entails,  in  lots 
bringing  a  yearly  income  of  2,000  or  3,000  roubles.  In  this  there  is,  evidently, 
less  an  aristocratic  intention  than  a  political  expedient.  The  object  is  to 
forestall  the  sale  of  lands  granted  to  Russians,  and  thus  to  retain  a  Russian 
element  in  the  country. 

t  Since  Alexander  III.  came  to  the  throne  various  systems  have  been 
mooted  to  prevent  the  increase  of  poverty  amongst  the  nobility  and  the 
frittering  away  of  its  lands.  Some  have  suggested  that  entails  should  be 
placed  within  the  reach  of  all  purses  ;  others,  that  the  law  should  hinder 
further  steps  in  this  direction,  by  instituting  "  normal  indivisible  lots  "  ;  Mr. 
Pobiedonostsef  advises  to  adopt  the  American  homestead  law,  and  allow 
landholders  of  all  classes  whatever  to  shield  estates  of  a  certain  standard 
value,  to  be  determined,  from  division  and  seizure  by  having  them  entered 
on  a  special  register. 


BOOK  VI.     CHAPTER  II. 

How  the  Monopoly  of  Territorial  Proprietorship  could  not  Confer  on  the 
Nobility  any  Political  Power — Historical  Reasons  of  this  Anomaly — 
The  Drujlna  of  the  Kniazes  and  the  Free  Service  of  the  Boydirs — 
Ancient  Conception  of  Property  :  the  Vdt-tchina  and  the  PomiistiyS — 
The  Service  of  the  Tsar  the  Only  Source  of  Fortune — The  Disputes  about 
Precedence  at  Table — Why  no  Real  Aristocracy  could  Come  out  of  all 
this — The  Hierarchy  of  Families  Succeeded  by  the  Hierarchy  of  Indi- 
viduals— The  "Table  of  Ranks,"  and  the  Fourteen  Classes  of  the 
7<rA«»— Results  of  this  Classification, 


This  authority,  this  independence  of  political  aristocracies,  the 
Russian  nobility  never  possessed,  not  even  at  the  still  recent  time 
when  it  enjoyed  the  exclusive  privilege  of  owning  the  soil,  and 
when  those  who  tilled  its  lands  were  its  slaves.  In  order  to 
account  for  this  apparent  anomaly  :  a  nobility  in  exclusive  posses- 
sion of  the  soil,  yet  debarred  from  the  power  which  such  possession 
imparts  everjrwhere  else,  we  must  work  our  way  back  into  the  past, 
to  the  roots  of  the  Russian  nobility  and  the  Russian  system  of  prop- 
erty. An  aristocracy  is  the  work  of  centuries,  the  strength  of  it 
can  be  tested  only  by  the  depth  to  which  its  roots  have  reached. 
Those  of  the  Russian  nobility  are  easily  laid  bare.  From  a 
remote  period  history  shows  us  the  dvorihnstvo  under  the  two 
aspects  it  has  preserved  ever  since :  as  servant  of  the  state  and  as 
holder  of  the  soil.  History  shows  us  the  bond  between  the  land- 
lord and  the  state  functionary  ;  it  shows  us  how  the  one  has  always 
kept  the  other  dependent  and  subordinate. 

Among  the  ancient  Russian  Slavs  there  does  not  appear  to 
have  been  either  a  nobility  or  an  aristocracy  of  any  kind.  The 
original  progenitor  of  the  Russian  dvorihnsivo  is  the  drujina,  which 

362 


NOBILITY  ANi)   TCHIN.  363 

makes  its  appearance  among  the  Slavs  of  N6vgorod  and  Kief 
with  Rurik  and  the  Varangians  from  the  North.  Originally  of 
the  same  race  and  rank  as  the  founders  of  the  Russian  Empire, 
the  drujina  were  the  companions  of  the  kniaz,  his  peers.  Such 
associations  are  met  with  everywhere  ;  they  surround  the  person 
of  the  Teutonic  chieftains  who  were  the  founders  of  all  the  mod- 
em European  states.  The  word  drujina,  jBrom  drug,  "  friend," 
recalls  the  trustes  of  the  Frank  kings,  so  that  the  drujinniki  (mem- 
bers of  the  drujina)  answer  to  the  antrustions.  Only  in  Russia 
this  body  preserved  its  primitive  features  longer  and  more  faith- 
fully, although  circumstances  did  not  allow  of  a  feudal  class 
springing  from  it.'  What  did  come  of  it  was  the  boyhr,  a  title 
which  confronts  us  at  a  very  early  time,  with  the  meaning  of 
"prince's  councillors,"  and  which  at  first  seems  to  have  merely 
indicated  a  high  rank  in  the  drujina,  as  suggested  by  the  word, 
derived  as  it  is  from  the  radical  bUii,  "  more,  greater,"  thus  liter- 
ally corresponding  to  the  familiar  European  form  of  speech  :  "  the 
g^eat  of  the  land, "  ' '  les  grands. ' ' 

The  essential  quality  of  the  drujinnik  was  that  of  free  com- 
panion, voltmtary  associate  and  follower.  He  served  the  kniaz, 
he  left  him,  at  his  own  will  and  pleasure  ;  he  was  free  to  exchange 
the  service  of  one  kniaz  for  that  of  another.  That  was  his  only 
right,  his  only  prerogative, — one,  however,  which  was  to  him  the 
safeguard  of  all  others,  for,  if  the  kniaz  wished  to  keep  his  drujina 

'  There  is  nothing  but  what  is  perfectly  natural  and  logical  in  the  fact 
of  no  feudal  class  or  social  system  having  sprung  up  out  of  the  occupation 
of  Russia  by  the  Varangians,  once  we  admit  that  they  were  Slavs  ;  whereas, 
if  the  German  theory  is  accepted,  this  same  fact  becomes  an  anomaly  and 
a  puzzle.  Why  should  a  band  of  Scandinavian  Northmen  have  abstained 
from  treating  this  one  country  in  the  same  way  that  their  brethren  had 
treated  all  the  countries  in  which  they  had  obtained  a  footing  ?  Because 
they  had  been  invited  over  ?  So  were  the  Saxons  by  the  Britons — and  used  the 
invitation  only  as  a  stepping-stone  to  conquest.  No ;  nothing  but  race- 
kindred  explains  the  diflference,  but  /Aa/ explains  it  fully  and  satisfactorily, 
with  all  its  sequels,  such  as  the  prompt  adoption  by  the  new-comers  of  the 
lateral  order  of  succession,  so  distinctively  Slavic.  (See  Appendix  to  Book 
IV.,  Ch.  II.,  p.  253.) 


./ 


364      THE  EMPIRE  OF  THE   TSARS  AND   THE  RUSSIANS. 

and  his  boyhrs,  he  was  fain,  on  occasion,  to  ask  their  advice,  and 
take  it,  too.  This  right  of  free  service  the  boyctrs,  heirs  to  the  dru- 
jtna,  treasured  long.  At  Moscow  itself,  under  the  first  "  Grand 
Kniazes"  of  the  new  line,  there  was  a  formula  to  that  eflfect:  "the 
hoyhrs and  free  servitors "  .  .  .  ("are  free  to  come  and  go,"  com- 
pletes the  saying).  This  freedom  and  choice  of  service,  however, 
could  last  only  as  long  as  the  system  of  appanages  and  the  division 
of  sovereignty.  The  drujind's  ancient  privilege  went  with  the 
last  appanages,  and  in  fact  itself  contributed  to  bring  about  the  fall 
of  the  appanage-principalities,  without  which  it  could  not  subsist. 
The  boyhrs  naturally  made  use  of  their  freedom  by  tendering  their 
services  to  the  wealthiest  and  most  powerful,  around  them  they 
crowded.  The  ' '  Grand-Kniazes ' '  of  Moscow  gradually  drew  them 
to  their  court,  and,  by  forsaking  and  consequently  weakening 
the  other  kniazes,  the  hoyhrs  undermined  the  appanage  system  and 
themselves  prepared  the  incorporation  of  the  smaller  principalities. 
The  reins  of  sovereignty  once  gathered  into  one  hand,  the  hoyhrs, 
from  companions  and  voluntary  associates  of  the  "Grand-Kniaz," 
quickly  became  his  servants  or,  as  they  entitled  themselves,  his 
"  varlets  "— M^/^/^. 

The  hoyhrs,  then,  to  begin  with,  lacked  the  base  on  which 
rested  the  feudal  aristocracies  of  the  West :  the  territorial  base,  a 
hold  on  the  soil  of  the  country.  The  drujinnik,  attached  to  the 
person  of  the  kniaz,  whom  he  followed  in  all  his  expeditions,  was 
bound  to  the  soil  by  no  permanent  tie  ;  he  lived  on  his  share  of 
the  booty  and  on  his  prince's  bounty.  The  very  right,  so  jealously 
guarded,  of  free  service,  hindered  the  drujina,  ever  on  the  move, 
from  settling  down  anywhere  and  striking  roots  into  the  soil. 
Thus  the  prerogative,  so  precious  a  safeguard  of  the  hoyars'  per- 
sonal independence,  became  an  obstacle  to  their  political  emancipa- 
tion ;  another  lay  in  the  constitution  of  the  property  tenure. 

Two  things  above  all  others  decide  a  country's  social  status : 
the  mode  of  holding  property,  and  the  laws  regulating  inheri- 
tances.   Now  in  Russia  the  legislation  on  landed  property  lingered 


NOBILITY  AND    TCHIN.  365 

long  in  stages  which  it  traversed  rapidly  in  the  West ;  it  never 
had  either  the  same  fixity  or  the  same  precision,  nor,  consequently, 
could  it  have  the  same  importance.  These  differences  can  be  ac- 
counted for  by  various  causes,  by  custom,  by  the  grade  of  civiliza- 
tion and  the  training  of  the  country,  by  the  immensity  of  the 
territory  coupled  with  the  scantiness  of  the  population. 

Among  the  early  Russians,  the  right  of  proprietorship  seems  as 
yet  ill  defined,  not  clearly  distinct  from  the  right  of  sovereignty. 
The  soil,  at  that  time  so  imperfectly  and  scantily  settled,  was  long 
regarded  as  a  public  demesne.  In  those  vast  plains,  unprovided 
with  natural  divisions,  it  seems  less  natural  than  elsewhere  to 
fence  up  the  land  and  award  the  ownership  of  it  to  individuals.* 
The  Russian  of  Moscovia  inclines  to  a  twofold  conception  of  land- 
tenure,  closely  akin  at  bottom  and  similar.  In  his  eyes,  the  land 
belongs  to  the  prince,  the  sovereign  of  the  country,  or  else  to  the 
commune,  to  the  body  of  men  who  till  it.  In  both  cases  it  is 
public  property,  inalienable  in  principle,  a  common  good,  of  which 
the  individuals,  be  they  noble  or  simple,  enjoy  only  the  use,  in 
exchange  for  certain  services  and  dues. 

The  kniaz  in  appanaged  Russia,  the  tsar  in  unified  Moscovia, 
considered  himself  as  the  owner,  the  supreme  landlord,  whose  will 
is  law.  His  quality  of  landlord  for  a  long  time  even  took  pre- 
cedence of  his  quality  as  sovereign  :  it  is  as  landlord  that  the 
"  Grand-Kniaz  "  of  Moscow  rules  and  manages  the  territory  of  his 
state,  as  he  would  a  private  domain.  These,  his  own  lands, 
the  kniaz  distributes  to  his  drujina,  the  tsar  to  his  boyhrs^  as 
guerdon  for  their  services.       In  a  country  of  sluggish  trade  and 

*  American  readers  will  need  no  explanation  of  this  seeming  incon- 
sistency. They  have  only  to  look  to  their  own  West  and  Southwest  for  a 
similar  state  of  public  feeling.  In  Texas,  it  is  to  this  day  a  serious  matter 
requiring  some  nerve,  to  fence  in  a  property  and  limit  the  general  right  of 
way  through  it  and  over  and  acro.ss  it.  Such  attempts  are  frequently  met 
by  systematic  fence-cutting ;  and  as  both  the  wooden  stakes  and  the  barbed 
wire  are  expensive  affairs,  many  a  ranch-owner  has  desisted,  especially  in 
the  remoter  and  more  lawless  districts,  where  public  irritation  is  apt  to  take 
even  more  direct  and  dangerous  forms  than  fence-cutting. 


366      THE  EMPIRE   OF   THE    TSARS  AND   THE  RUSSIANS. 

little  wealth,  where  coined  money  comes  in  late  and  remains  scarce 
always,  land  is  for  the  sovereign  the  most  handy  thing  to  use  for 
compensations  and  rewards  ;  it  is  pay  for  the  captain,  salary  for 
the  functionary,  pension  for  the  retired  servant, — and  in  these 
capacities  it  is  received,  not  as  a  perpetual,  hereditary  homestead  ; 
it  is  neither  the  centre  of  a  family,  nor  a  focus  of  influence. 

For  the  drujtna,  and  later  on  for  the  nobility,  landed  property 
became  a  bond  of  dependence,  a  fetter — anything  but  an  agent  of 
independence  and  power.  Two  modes  of  personal  land-tenure 
confront  us  in  ancient  Russia,  and,  consequently,  two  categories 
of  landed  property  :  the  vbt-tchina  and  the  pomiestiye — the  land 
inherited  from  ancestors,  the  patrimony,  and  the  land  awarded  by 
the  sovereign,  a  grant  to  be  enjoyed  by  the  servants  of  the  state.* 
These  grants  somewhat  recall  the  fiefs  or  benefices  of  the  West. 
In  Moscovia,  as  in  Western  Europe,  the  land  grants,  conferred  as 
recompenses  for  services  done,  early  superseded  the  patrimonial 
estates ;  the  pomiistiyi  absorbed  the  vbt-tchina.  From  the  pomiis- 
tiyi  proceeds  the  present  nobleman's  estate,  so  that  the  term 
pomiesh-tchik  has  come  to  mean  merely  *  *  landlord. ' '  There  was  an 
important  class  of  vbt-tchinnikf,  or  men  who  held  land  in  their  own 
right,  and  as  an  inheritance  from  their  ancestors  :  it  was  the  kniazes, 
the  appanage  princes,  with  whom  the  ownership  of  land  sur- 
vived sovereignty.  The  Moscovite  princes  undertook  to  remedy 
this  state  of  things  which,  under  their  rule,  was  a  sort  of  anomaly. 
The  Grand-Kniaz  took  care  not  to  leave  to  his  kinsfolk  of 
the  collateral  lines  the  proprietorship  of  demesnes  annexed  to 
the  main  principality.  The  mediatized  princes  were  reduced  to 
exchange  their  hereditary  vbt-tchinas  against  pomiestiyis  situated 
far  from  the  regions  where  their  fathers  had  reigned  and  of  which 
themselves  sometimes  bore  the  name.  The  Englishman,  Fletcher, 
Queen  Elizabeth's  envoy,  noticed,  as  late  as  the  end  of  the  sixteenth 

*  Vdt-tchina  or  Ot-tchina,  "patrimony,"  from  otiits,  "father"  ;  pomiis- 
tiyi, "rural  estate,"  from  miisto,  "place," — a  word  which,  like  its  French 
and  English  equivalents,  designates  both  locations  and  employments  or 
functions. 


NOBILITY  AND    TCHIN.  367 

century,  how  persistently  the  Moscovite  tsars  strove  to  weaken,  to 
eradicate  so  to  speak,  the  families  descended  from  Rurik,  by  tearing 
them  from  their  native  soil  and  transplanting  them  into  a  strange 
one.  The  only  Russian  families  who  had  a  territorial  footing,  the 
only  ones  that  seemed  destined  to  found  an  aristocracy  as  opposed 
to  the  "  Grand-Kniaz," — the  heirs  of  the  appanaged  princes,  were 
thus  lowered  to  the  level  of  mere  pomiish-tchikiy  men  who  held 
their  land  and  fortune  from  the  master's  pleasure. 

The  Moscovite  tsar  remained  the  only  supreme  landlord  as  well 
as  the  only  sovereign.  The  most  illustrious  families  were  scat- 
tered here  and  there  over  the  land,  owning  no  traditional  home- 
stead, no  centre  of  local  influence,  similar  to  that  singular  herb 
of  the  steppes,  which  the  autumn  winds  wildly  chase  across  the 
plain  haphazard  in  dry  bunches.  Between  the  dvorihnstvo  and  the 
soil  there  never  has  been  the  same  bond,  the  same  association  as  in 
the  West.  The  nobility  is  not  identified  with  the  soil  as  in  the 
rest  of  Europe,  nor  with  the  region  in  which  it  resides.  The 
nobles  do  not  bear  the  name  of  their  estate  or  their  township,  as 
indicated  by  the  French  de  and  the  German  von  prefixed  to  the 
names.'  Now,  every  aristocracy  resembles  the  giant  of  the 
Greek  myth,  who  derived  his  strength  from  contact  with  his 
mother.  Earth.  This  lack  of  localization,  of  centre,  of  territorial 
basis,  sufl&ciently  accounts  for  the  incurable  feebleness  of  the  boyhrs 
as  a  class,  and  the  failure  of  all  aristocratical  attempts  in  ancient 
Russia.  Nothing  there  recalls  the  proud  dwellings  of  the  Western 
aristocracies,  the  inheritors  of  feudalism  ;  nothing  resembles  those 

*  This  remark,  though  correct  on  the  whole,  is  somewhat  too  sweeping. 
Several  old  princely  families  bear  the  names  of  their  former  principalities, 
as  the  author  himself  remarked  just  now  ;  so,  for  instance,  the  Moss^lskys, 
some  branches  of  whom  have  dropped  the  title,  were  named  for  a  small 
principality,  the  capital  of  which,  Moss^lsk,  is  even  yet  a  flourishing  third- 
class  city.  Many  noble  families  were  originally  named  after  their  oldest  or 
finest  estate.  The  frequent  name-ending  sky,  which  takes  gender  and 
number,  is  an  adjective  desinence,  so  that  "  the  Mossdlskys"  really  means 
"those  of  Moss^sk,"  and  might  very  well  be  rendered  by  de  or  von 
Moss^Isk. 


368      THE  EMPIRE   OF  THE    TSARS  AND   THE  RUSSIANS. 

mediaeval  castles,  so  solidly  squatting  on  the  soil,  so  haughtily 
pervaded  with  the  might  of  the  families  whose  strongholds  they 
were/  Russian  nature  herself  seems  to  repudiate  these  domestic 
fortresses,  by  providing  neither  the  sites  nor  the  materials  for 
them — the  rocky  steeps  whose  brow  they  should  crown,  the  stone 
of  which  they  should  be  built.  The  wooden  house,  so  often 
burned  down,  so  quickly  worm-eaten,  so  easy  to  transport  or  to 
reconstruct,  is  a  meet  emblem  of  Russian  life ;  the  very  dwelling^ 
aptly  represent  the  precariousness  of  the  aristocracy's  destinies. 

Owing  to  the  pomihtiyi,  the  Russian  noble  appears  before  us, 
ever  since  the  Middle  Ages,  in  the  twofold  aspect  in  which  we  see 
him  to  this  day  :  that  of  owner  of  the  soil  and  servant  of  the  state. 
These  two  qualities,  sometimes  separated  in  later  times,  at  first 
hold  closely  together  ;  the  latter  is  the  condition,  the  cause,  of  the 
former.  •  It  is  as  servant  of  the  Grand-ELniaz  that  the  noble 
receives  his  pontiistiyS,  it  is  as  such  that  his  children  retain  pos- 
session of  it.  The  pomihh-tchik  remains  dependent  on  the  sov- 
ereign who  gave  him  his  land,  and,  later  on,  when  serfdom  is 
established,  gives  him,  in  the  peasants  attached  to  the  glebe,  the 
instruments  of  cultivation.  For  the  Russian  noble,  landed  prop- 
erty is  a  bread-giver,  a  means  of  subsistence,  of  maintenance  j  he 
does  not  settle  on  it,  does  not  become  attached  to  it,  for  he  knows 
that  the  river  of  his  fortunes  flows  from  another  source. 

Under  the  old  tsars,  as  under  the  successors  of  Peter  the  Great, 

it  was  in  the  capital,  at  court,  that  government  places  were 

obtained,  that  wealth  and  influence  were  to  be  acquired.     The 

fascination  which  Versailles  under  Louis  XIV.  exerted  on  the 

high  French    nobility  was  wielded  no  less  imperatively  by  the 

barbarous  Kremlin  over  Moscovite  kniazes  and  boyhrs.     The  court 

spirit,  so  opposed  to  the  true  aristocratical  spirit,  already  per- 

*  Families,  no  matter  how  "  mighty,"  needed  no  strongholds,  since  they 
were  a  growth  of  the  same  soil  as  the  people,  scions  of  one  race,  nnlike 
feudal  aristocracies,  which,  being  based  on  an  iniquitous  thing — conquest — 
naturally  were  the  objects  of  both  race-hatred  and  class-hatred,  and  conse- 
quently in  constant  danger. 


NOBILITY  AND    TCHIN.  369 

vaded  the  entire  dvorihnsivo.  In  France,  even  when  most  tinder 
control,  the  noblesse  maintained  the  gentleman's  outward  dignity  ; 
in  Russia  it  was  not  supported  by  ancient  traditions,  nor  by  the 
conventional  code  of  * '  honor, ' '  nor  by  the  habitual  politeness 
which  tempers  the  master's  arrogance  and  gilds  over  the  cour- 
tier's humility.  At  the  semi-Byzantine  court  of  Moscow,  the 
tsars  did  not  take  much  thought  of  disguising  under  a  becoming 
garment  the  bondage  of  the  hoyhrs,  or  the  boycirs  of  throwing  a 
veil  over  their  servility.  Everybody  knows  the  saying  reported 
of  the  Emperor  Paul  I.  by  J.  De  Maistre  or  S^gur.  "  Sir,"  he  is 
said  to  have  remarked  to  a  foreigner,  ' '  I  know  of  no  grand  seig- 
neur but  the  man  to  whom  I  am  speaking,  while  I  am  speaking 
to  him."  An  Ivan  or  a  Vassili  might  already  have  spoken  in  the 
same  way.  Outside  of  their  sovereign  favor,  the  tsars  did  not 
like  to  concede  to  their  subjects  any  personal  advantage,  any 
superiority  of  birth.  If  a  subject  was  allowed  to  derive  any  glory 
or  profit  from  his  ancestor's  titles,  it  was  from  the  rank  obtained  by 
them  in  the  service  of  the  veliki-kniaz.  This  gave  rise  to  a  novel 
hierarchy,  a  peculiar  order  of  precedence,  which,  under  the  name 
oi  miht-ni-tchestvo,  was  in  force  as  late  as  in  the  sixteenth  and 
seventeenth  centuries. 

At  the  Moscovite  court,  precedence  gradually  ceased  to  depend 
on  birth  and  the  rank  of  blood ;  all  the  subjects  of  the  veliki-kniaz 
were  measured  by  one  common  standard — ^state  service.  The 
"place  occupied  " — miisto — ^was  the  only  gauge  applied  to  every 
one's  claims  and  titles,  and  the  rank  it  conferred  extended  not  to 
individuals  alone,  but  to  their  families  as  well.  In  force  of  the 
precedence  thus  obtained,  a  man  could  not  serve  under  another 
who  had  at  any  time  been  placed  under  the  orders  of  his  father. 
Such  a  system  must  in  time  have  led  to  heredity  of  office.  The 
dignity  of  boyhr,  the  highest  in  old-time  Russia,  although 
nominally  enjoyed  only  for  life,  was  in  reality  fast  getting  to  pass 
from  father  to  son.     Sixteen  families,  the  historian  Solovi6f  tells 

us,  had  received  the  right  of  having  their  members  enter  at  once 

24 


370       THE  EMPIRE   OF   THE    TSARS  AND    THE  RUSSIANS. 

the  ranks  of  the  boyHrs.  In  some  fifteen  others  the  young  men 
began  in  the  rank  of  the  okdlnik,  the  second  Moscovite  dignity. 
Of  these  privileged  families,  twenty  bore  the  title  of  kniaz  and 
were  descended  from  Rurik  or  Guedimin.  In  the  other  families 
a  son  entered  service  two  grades  below  the  grade  attained  by  his 
father ;  if  he  did  not  advance,  his  son  started  two  grades  lower 
still,  and,  if  this  went  on,  the  family  of  course  dropped  into 
obscurity.  For  the  reg^ilation  of  each  individual's  rights  and 
each  family's  claims,  special  registers  or  service-lists  were  kept. 

It  is  easy  to  see  how  great  must  have  been,  in  the  eyes  of  the 
veliki-kniazes,  the  advantages  of  this  system,  out  of  which  a 
new  aristocracy  seemed  sure  to  grow.  In  Moscow  itself,  the  side 
branches  of  the  reigning  house  naturally  enjoyed,  at  first,  a 
special  consideration.  In  order  to  deprive  them  of  it,  the  veliki- 
kniazes  began  to  raise  their  boyhrs  to  the  same  level  as  that  on 
which  stood  the  descendants  of  Rurik,  reserving  the  right  of 
lowering  by  and  by  both  kniazes  and  boyhrs  at  one  stroke.  The 
law  of  precedence  obliged  the  heirs  of  the  dispossessed  princes  to 
renounce  all  tradition  of  independent  greatness.  Not  otherwise 
than  all  other  subjects  of  the  tsars,  they  were  reduced  to  seek 
lustre  and  nobility  only  in  the  favor  and  service  of  the  sover- 
eign. The  effect  of  the  iron  rule  of  precedence  was  to  merge  both 
the  former  appanage-princes  and  the  Moscovite  boyhrs  into  one 
court  nobility,  holding  all  dignities  and  prerogatives  from  the 
pleasure  of  the  tsar.  In  less  than  a  century  the  fiision  was  so 
complete  that,  when  the  reigning  d5aiasty  became  extinct,  it  was 
not  from  its  side  branches  that  the  new  head  of  the  state  was  taken. 

This  artificial  hierarchy  was,  in  the  course  of  nature,  to  make 
things  awkward  for  the  monarch,  who  at  first  had  made  himself 
a  tool  out  of  it.  The  effects  proved  especially  disastrous  in  war, 
by  strictly  limiting  the  choice  of  oflficers,  and  to  this  the  frequent 
defeats  endured  by  Russia  in  the  sixteenth  and  seventeenth  centu- 
ries are  partly  to  be  imputed.  No  aristocracy  could  have  been 
more  exclusive,  more  stationary,  more  rife  with  rivalries,  owing 


NOBILITY  AND    TCHIN.  3/1 

to  the  difficulty  of  settling  the  rights  of  each  man  and  putting  a 
stop  to  the  altercations  which  occurred  even  on  the  battle-field 
itself.  Ivan  the  Terrible,  indeed,  had,  in  1550,  attempted  to  re- 
strain these  unseemly  wranglings,  not  only  by  forbidding  disputes 
on  rank  to  any  noble  who  was  not  the  head  of  his  family,  but  by 
prohibiting  all  nobles,  while  on  active  military  duty,  to  raise  in  the 
army  any  question  of  the  kind  with  voyevbds  (generals)  of  families 
inferior  to  theirs,  so  long  as  they  were  not  themselves  voyevbds.^ 

To  have  held  its  ground  so  long  in  spite  of  such  intrinsic  faults, 
this  institution  must  have  had  some  moral  hold  on  the  nation. 
This  the  historians  think  to  find  in  the  strong  family  feeling,  the 
sort  of  patriarchal  tie  that  narrowly  bound  together  men  of  one 
blood,  and  made  these  bonds  of  kindred  the  stronger  that 
in  Moscovia  there  were  no  others.  The  individual  could  not  be 
conceived  apart  from  the  kin,  the  rod  (L^atin  gens).  The  honors 
conferred  on  a  man  were  in  a  measure  bestowed  on  his  people 
also ;  when  one  of  its  members  was  raised  to  a  certain  dignity, 
the  whole  family  felt  lifted  in  rank  along  with  him.  Thus,  in 
our  days,  a  general  does  not  like  to  serve  under  another  general 
whom  he  ranks  in  grade.  Death  was  as  nothing  to  a  Russian 
when  his  ancestral  rank  was  in  question  ;  to  yield  would  have 
been  to  write  himself  a  traitor.  The  kniaz  who  titled  himself 
the  tsar's  slave,  who  almost  cringed  out  of  existence  before  him, 
refused  to  sit  at  his  table  below  a  man  whom  he  ranked  by  the 
law  of  precedence.  In  vain,  the  chroniclers  tell  us,  the  tsar 
would  command  him  to  be  seated  by  force  in  the  place  appointed 
him  at  the  table  ;  the  offended  guest  would  resist,  rise  from  his 
seat  opposing  violence  to  violence,  and  leave  the  hall,  shouting 
that  he  would  lose  his  head  before  he  would  give  up  the  place 
which  he  could  claim  by  right.  These  disputes  about  precedence 
are  perhaps  the  only  indication  of  the  feeling  of  right  in  the 
old  Moscovite  nobility,  or  of  the  feeling  of  honor^  both  so 
mighty  in  the  feudal  society  of  the  West. 

*  See  A.  Rambaud,  Histoire  de  Russie,  p.  241. 


372      THE  EMPIRE  OF  THE   TSARS  AND   THE  RUSSIANS. 

In  spite  of  appearances,  this  order  of  hereditary  precedence, 
so  unfavorable  to  personal  merit,  was  incapable  of  producing  a 
genuine  aristocracy.  What  was  consecrated  by  miistnitchestvo 
was  not  the  rights  of  a  class,  the  prerogatives  of  a  caste  :  it  was  a 
set  of  individual,  private  claims,  the  rights  of  such  or  such  a  per- 
son, of  such  or  such  a  family.  Even  among  these  privileged  ones 
the  order  of  precedence  created,  instead  of  solid  bonds,  an  ever- 
lasting antagonism.  Even  for  the  kind  of  oligarchy  that  was 
benefited  by  it,  it  was  a  source  of  rivalry  and  discord.  It  made 
impossible  the  first  condition  of  an  aristocracy — homogeneous- 
ness,  solidarity  ;  it  kept  each  noble  in  strife  with  his  equals,  each 
family  at  war  with  its  rivals.  The  motto  of  the  system  might 
have  been  :  "  Each  against  all."  There  was  nothing  there  out  of 
which  to  build  up  an  enduring  force.  Accordingly,  when  its  in- 
conveniences became  too  obvious,  the  rival  claims  and  competi- 
tions too  complicated,  it  collapsed,  with  the  consent  of  the  very 
families  who  were  benefited  by  it.  It  was  abolished  without  effort, 
under  the  reign  of  one  of  Old  Russia's  feeblest  tsars,  Feodor 
Alex6yevitch,  the  half-brother,  and,  in  that  as  in  sundry  other 
things,  the  pale  foreshadowing  of  Peter  the  Great.  All  he  had  to 
do  was  to  order  the  public  burning  of  the  books,  to  which  was 
substituted  a  plain  genealogical  register,  which,  under  the  name  of 
Velvet  Book  exists  to  this  day  ;  an  interesting  relic,  as  it  gives  a 
census  of  the  high  nobility  previous  to  Peter.  It  shows  that  then 
already  the  greater  part  of  noble  families,  about  five  hundred, 
were  of  foreign  or  half-foreign  extraction  :  lyithuanian,  Polish, 
Tatar,  German,  etc.  About  a  hundred  were  of  unknown  extrac- 
tion, and  two  hundred  only  pure  Russian,  among  these  one  htm- 
dred  and  sixty-four  families  of  kniazes,  descended  from  Rurik. 

The  natural  successor  of  a  hierarchy  classified  after  the  func- 
tions exercised  by  families  was  a  hierarchy  classified  after  the  posts 
filled  by  individuals.  The  standard  of  rank  remained  the  same — 
state  service  still.  But  the  services  of  ancestors  ceased  to  be 
taken  into  accoimt.     It  was  not  noble  birth  that  gave  a  right  to 


NOBILITY  AND    TCHIN.  3/3 

certain  posts,  but  the  posts  which  conferred  and  perpetuated  the 
titles  of  nobility.  Every  dvorianhi  was  bound  to  enter  service, 
military  or  civil.  Thus  the  entire  body  once  again  became  a  class 
strictly  of  servants  of  the  state,  and,  the  hereditary  titles  of  some 
families  being  overlooked,  there  was  in  its  midst  no  other  classifica- 
tion, no  other  order  of  precedence,  but  those  instituted  by  service. 

Peter  the  Great  abolished  the  old  title  of  dojyar,  which  recalled 
antiquated  claims.  To  the  barbarous  and  ponderous  Moscovite 
hierarchy  he  substituted  the  "Table  of  Ranks,"  which,  in  its 
fourteen  classes,  encloses  to  this  day  the  entire  Russian  ofl&cial 
world.  The  civil  functions,  even  the  ecclesiastical  dignities,  are 
there  assimilated  to  the  grades  in  the  army  and,  from  the  ensign 
and  "college  registrar"  who  stand  on  the  lowest  rung  of  the 
ladder  (fourteenth  class),  to  the  field  marshal  and  the  chancellor 
who  are  alone  enthroned  on  the  top,  all  the  servants  of  the  state 
are  distributed  in  tiers,  each  according  to  his  ^chm  or  grade,  in  a 
double  parallel  series,  on  fourteen  numbered  rungs  or  ranks.  It 
is  not  in  the  darkness  of  the  Middle- Ages,  iinder  the  Tatar  yoke 
— ^it  is  in  the  eighteenth  century,  by  the  hand  of  the  greatest  of 
modem  reformers,  that  this  institution  of  the  icAzn  was  established 
with  its  Chinese  sounding  name,  and  indeed  recalling  that  of  the 
mandarins  with  their  classes  symbolized  by  buttons  of  difierent 
colors.*  It  was  from  Europe,  though  mainly  from  Germany, 
that  Peter  borrowed  most  of  these  titles,  obsolete  and  devoid  of 

*  What  is  here  incidentally  and  jestingly  remarked  has  been  seriously 
advanced  as  proof  of  the  alleged  Mongolian  origin  of  the  Russian  people 
and  its  national  institutions  (a  wholesale  recast  of  the  German,  bureau- 
cratic hierarchy,  with  even  the  titles  either  retained  or  translated).  Now 
the  word  tchin  is  a  good  Slavic  radical  with  the  meaning  of  "action,  work," 
the  progenitor  of  a  vast  family  of  derived  words,  which,  by  the  aid  of 
desinences,  prefixes,  suflSxes,  and  the  like,  express  every  shade  and  grade  of 
the  parent  idea  :  pri-tcMn-a,  "cause "  ;  tchin-lti,  "  to  do,  operate,  repair  "  ; 
so-tchin-itel,  "  composer  *' ;  u-tchin-idii,  "  to  cause,  to  make  "  (trouble, 
good,  evil),  etc.,  etc.  Tchindvnik,  therefore,  which  has  become  the  typical 
word  for  "bureaucrat,"  "  employ^,"  "red-tape-man,"  originally  meant 
simply  "a  worker"  (but  not  a  manual  laborer).  Tchin-dvnitchestvo  (tchin- 
dom)  is  the  entire  system  or  regime,  as  well  as  the  whole  class  as  a  body. 


374      7WS  EMPIRE  OF   THE    TSARS  AND   THE  RUSSIANS. 

meaning  nowadays:  "college  registrar,"  "college  assessor," 
"State  councillor"  (^Staatsrath),  "actual  State  councillor" 
{wirklicher  StaatsratK)^  "  privy  councillor  "  {Geheimerath),  ^ic.  ; 
all  foreign  designations  which  in  Russia  never  designated  any 
real  functions,  and  which  now,  as  from  the  first,  represent  only 
a  sort  of  civil  grade,  often  unconnected  with  any  duties.  If  the 
names  were  foreign,  however,  the  spirit  of  the  institution  was 
thoroughly  Russian,  well  adapted  to  this  autocratic  soil  where 
neither  a  strong  aristocracy  nor  a  free  democracy  ever  could 
thrive.  In  establishing  his  * '  Table  of  Ranks, ' '  the  great  imitator 
of  Europe  only  took  the  old  Moscovite  traditions  and  tricked  out 
in  modem  garb  the  policy  of  the  old  tsars. 

During  a  century  and  a  half  Peter's  "Fourteen  Classes" 
have  made  of  Russia  a  sort  of  army  in  which  each  man  was 
ranked  according  to  his  grade.  Such  a  hierarchy  could  be  good 
for  a  period  of  transition,  for  a  people  still  full  of  prejudices,  poor 
in  trade  and  industry,  at  a  time  when  the  only  road  to  greatness 
was  the  service  of  the  state,  when  public  functions  were  the  only 
school  of  a  higher  culture.  \  By  tying  down  the  nobles  to  ser- 
vice, Peter  made  of  the  nobihty  the  instruments  and  support  of 
a  reform  which  in  itself  did  not  inspire  it  with  much  sympathy.* 
There  was  some  sense  in  the  thing  when  the  men  enrolled  in  the 
fourteen  classes  were  alone  possessed  of  the  rights  of  freemen, 
when  a  diplomat  laughingly  proposed,  as  a  means  of  freeing 
Russia  from  corporal  punishment,  to  raise  the  whole  people  to  the 
fourteenth  (lowest)  class.  In  a  more  advanced  state  of  society, 
with  a  civilization  so  varied  and  manifold,  which  opens  so  many 
outiets  to  intellect  and  activity,  such  an  artificial  classification 
according  to  services  becomes  an  idle  hindrance.  It  is,  to  say 
the  least,  an  anachronism.  At  a  time  in  which  private  initiative 
under  all  its  forms,  in  which  science    and  art,    commerce  and 

*  A  great  stroke  of  genius  which  more  than  counterbalances  any  drawbacks 
or  faults.  Peter  usually  had  a  choice  of  evils,  and  his  greatness  showed  in 
choosing  the  evil  from  which  good  was  likely  to  come  in  some  form. 


NOBILITY  AND    TCHIN.  375 

industry,  hold  so  large  a  place,  the  men  on  public  duty  are  not 
always  the  most  useful  or  notable  servants  of  their  country. 
It  is  getting  more  and  more  awkward  to  class  talents,  impossible 
to  stamp  each  man's  rank  and  merits  with  an  external  sign,  a 
figure.  There  is  no  longer  an  accepted  weight  to  weigh  minds, 
no  longer  a  legal,  oflScial  standard,  one  common  measure  suiting 
so  many  different  capacities.  The  effort  is  vain  to  assimilate  to 
military  grades  professions  naturally  independent  and  rebellious 
to  every  kind  of  hierarchy,  or  careers  from  their  nature  subject  to 
all  the  hazards  of  competition. 

In  Russia,  the  habit  of  fitting  all  things  into  the  fourteen 
pigeon  holes  of  the  "Table  of  Ranks"  is  such  that  not  even 
the  arts  have  escaped  it.  The  actors  and  singers  of  the  imperial 
theatres  are  officially  divided  into  several  categories,  each  having 
its  own  particular  rank  and  rights.  Hence  the  ridiculous 
Russian  titles  and  designations,  such  as  "candidate,"  "com- 
merce councillor,"  "manufacture  councillor,"  (German,  Kandi- 
dat,  Kommerzienrath,  ManufakturratK), — appellations  which  raise 
a  merchant  with  a  fortune  of  several  millions  to  the  level  of  the 
seventh  or  eighth  class,  i.  e.,  to  the  rank  of  a  major  or  lieutenant- 
colonel.  With  such  a  method  it  would  have  been  but  logical  to 
create  generals  of  commerce,  and  we  ought  to  have  marshals  of 
science  or  poetry.  There  was  a  story  current  at  the  time  I  was 
travelling  in  the  Bast,  of  the  Sultan's  having  raised  his  physician 
to  the  rank  of  general  of  division  to  reward  him  for  having  cured 
him  of  an  anthrax.  Nominations,  or  rather  promotions,  of  this 
kind  are  habitual  in  Russia  ;  the  Official  Journal  is  full  of 
them.  It  would  be  difficult  to  count  the  physicians  who  have  a 
tchin  ;  there  are  among  them  * '  actual  state  councillors  ' '  (fourth 
class),  answering  to  the  rank  of  major-general,  "privy  councillors" 
(third  class),  ranking  with  generals  of  division.  The  same  with 
scientists,  professors,  writers  ;  tricked  out  in  the  same  titles 
as  administrators  or  magistrates,  they  may  advance  pari  passu 
with  them  in  the  civil  career. 


376      THE  EMPIRE  OF  THE    TSARS  AND   THE  RUSSIANS. 

All  these  promotions  in  the  line  of  the  tchin  do  not  hinder 
others  in  that  of  imperial  ' '  orders. ' '  There  are  five  or  six  of 
these  orders  of  knighthood,  some  more,  and  some  less  sought 
after,  mostly  divided  into  two,  three,  even  four  classes.  There 
are  the  orders  of  St.  Andrew,  of  St.  Alexander  Nevsky,  of  Ste. 
Anna ;  of  St.  Vladimir,  of  St.  George,  not  to  mention  those  of 
St.  Stanislaus  and  the  White  Eagle,  originally  Polish  orders. 
Since  the  last  war  in  Bulgaria,  one  more  order  has  been  invented, 
for  services  to  the  wounded,  the  order  of  the  Red  Cross,  which  the 
empress  distributes  to  ladies.  There  was  already  a  decoration 
specially  reserved  to  women,  the  order  of  Ste.  Catherine.  There 
is  besides,  for  the  army  in  time  of  war,  the  sword  of  honor  with 
eulogy  ;  for  civilians  or  for  generals  in  time  of  peace,  there  are 
diamond  rings  with  the  imperial  monogram,  and  at  all  times 
golden  snuff-boxes  set  with  diamonds  and  adorned  with  the 
emperor's  portrait  or  monogram.  Few  are  the  high  functionaries 
who  cannot  show  on  their  bric-a-brac  shelves  one  of  these  imperial 
snuff-boxes.  The  ladies  of  high  rank  also  can  receive  analogous 
distinctions ;  no  one  has  read  memoirs  on  the  court  of  St.  Peters- 
burgh  but  knows  about  the  "  maid  of  honor  with  portrait." 

Over  and  above  the  tchin  and  the  orders  of  knighthood, 
Russia  possesses  quite  a  number  of  social  distinctions  conferred 
somewhat  indiscriminately  and  therefore  comparatively  little 
prized.  These  are  the  court  charges,  graduated  after  the  manner 
of  the  "  Table  of  Ranks,"  and,  like  the  titles  in  the  civil  service, 
for  the  most  part  purely  honorary  and  nominal.  To  the  ' '  state 
councillors"  and  "privy  cotmcillors,"  "actual"  or  not,  who 
never  assist  at  any  council,  correspond  the  "court  masters" 
(Hofmeister),  who  have  nothing  to  do  with  the  palace  ceremonial. 
In  no  other  country  are  the  means  of  classing  men,  of  stamping 
merit  and  putting  it,  so  to  speak,  at  a  premium,  so  numerous,  so 
varied,  and — so  improductive.  If  the  fruits  of  this  system  of 
official  encouragement  are  not  more  plentiful,  the  fault  lies  only 
with  its  natural  barrenness. 


NOBILITY  AND    TCHIN.  377 

In  such  a  scale  of  classification,  science  and  public  instruction, 
which  has  always  been  one  of  the  imperial  government's  chief 
cares,  could  not  be  ignored.  University  degrees  accordingly  con- 
fer a  tchin,  the  graduating  examination  at  the  end  of  a  gymnasium 
or  college  course  entitles  to  the  lowest  class  of  the  bureaucratic 
hierarchy.  Thus,  by  the  fact  of  entering  the  university,  the 
student  already  has  his  foot  on  the  ladder,  and  each  diploma 
raises  him  one  rung.  As  it  is  work  which,  with  the  assistance 
of  the  "Table  of  Ranks,"  gives  access  to  places  and  opens  the 
ranks  of  the  nobility,  it  may  be  said  that,  rank  depending  on 
grade,  and  that  again  on  success  in  study,  the  entire  Russian 
hierarchy  is  but  the  hierarchy  of  labor  and  knowledge,  and  that 
the  nobility  which  results  therefrom  is  a  nobility  of  knowledge 
and  cidture.  Such,  indeed,  is  the  case,  and  this  it  is  that  justifies 
the  tchin — or  rather  justified  it  in  the  past.  Such  a  method, 
though  good  in  a  school  or  one  particular  career,  is  inadequate, 
as  every  artificial  hierarchy  must  be,  when  applied  to  an  entire 
society.  Such  attempts  at  numbering  and  pigeonholing  men  and 
merits  have  almost  always  missed  their  aim  ;  or  if,  exceptionally, 
they  seemed  to  succeed,  it  was  only  by  swathing  society  in  un- 
comfortable bands. 

We  can  match  the  hierarchy  of  the  tchin  with  examples  taken 
from  Asia — for  instance,  China  and  Turkey.  We  can  even  find 
in  modem  Europe  a  few  more  or  less  analogous  institutions,  such 
as  the  first  Napoleon's  I^egion  of  Honor  and  his  nobility.  The 
latter,  in  its  fundamental  conception,  was  much  like  Peter's 
"Table  of  Ranks."  The  founder  of  the  "lyCgion  d'Honneur" 
also  claimed  that  he  would  enroll,  dispose  in  a  given  order,  all  the 
social  forces  of  the  nation  ;  but,  having  to  do  with  a  later  and 
more  advanced  stage  of  society,  he  was  even  less  successful  than 
Peter  the  Great ;  his  institution  survived  as  a  mere  order  of 
knighthood,  with  no  greater  social  value  than  any  other  decora- , 
tion.  All  goes  to  show  that,  in  our  state  of  civilization,  it  is  not 
any  easier  to  invent  a  rational  way  of  classing  individuals  than  to 


378       THE  EMPIRE   OF   THE    TSARS  AND    THE  RUSSIANS. 

do  SO  for  families.  Any  such  hierarchy  can  have  no  other  type 
than  the  service  of  the  state,  no  other  standard  than  public  func- 
tions ;  therefore  it  can,  in  the  end,  only  encourage  place-hunting 
and  correspondingly  discourage  free  labor,  whether  intellectual 
or  material,  and  weaken  the  great  mainspring  of  our  civilization 
— individual  enterprise. 

The  tchin,  which  makes  rank  to  depend  on  post  and  post  on 
merit,  appears  at  first  sight  to  be  an  altogether  democratic  insti- 
tution ;  it  is  so,  in  certain  ways  ;  in  others  it  is,  on  the  contrary, 
a  brake  to  any  kind  of  healthy,  fi-ee  democracy.  The  practical 
perfection  of  the  tchin  and  the  fourteen  classes  would  be  the 
tritunph  of  tchindvnism — the  exclusive  and  absolute  reign  of 
bureaucracy,  to  the  profit  of  despotism  and  the  detriment  of 
democracy  and  aristocracy  both.  And  in  the  inner  workings  of 
this  sovereign  bureaucracy,  this  system,  which  from  afar  appears 
so  favorable  to  personal  merit,  is  so  in  reality  to  routine,  sloth, 
and  mediocrity.  It  can  be  asserted  without  injustice  that  the 
"Table  of  Ranks,"  in  the  end,  has  lowered  the  level  of  state 
service  which  it  was  instituted  to  raise. 

In  the  transformation  which  Russia  is  undergoing,  the  tchin 
naturally  forfeits  much  of  its  importance  ;  its  sway  is  less  tyran- 
nical, and  liberties  are  sometimes  taken  with  it.  The  new  provin- 
cial institutions,  the  electoral  system  founded  on  the  free  choice 
of  persons,  the  representative  system  founded  on  the  appointment 
of  a  representative  by  his  peers — these  things  are  not  easy  to  con- 
ciliate with  the  "  Table  of  Ranks,"  and  will  sooner  or  later  make 
short  work  of  it.  The  extension  of  public  liberties  will  leave 
both  the  sovereign  and  the  country  fi-ee  to  choose  the  servants  of 
the  state  outside  of  all  categories,  and  will  destroy  the  privileges 
of  the  tchin,  which  has  been  substituted  for  the  privilege  of  birth.  ^ 
The  suppression  of  the  "  Table  of  Ranks  "  has  been  spoken  of 
already,  both  under  Alexander  II.  and  Alexander  III.  If  it  has 
not  been  done  yet,  it  is  probably  due  to  reluctance  to  change  old 
'  See  Appendix  to  this  chapter. 


NOBILITY  AND    TCHIN.  379 

habits  and  to  the  dread  of  having  to  pay  higher  salaries  to  func- 
tionaries whom  it  will  no  longer  be  so  easy  to  satisfy  with  titles. 
There  also  is  perhaps  a  lurking  fear  that  such  a  measure  may 
prove  too  profitable  to  favoritism  and  nepotism. 


APPENDIX  TO  BOOK  VI.,  CHAPTER  n.    (See  note  6,  p.  374.) 

That  the  system,  faithfully  described  in  this  chapter,  could  be  so  easily 
adopted  and  so  promptly  acclimated,  is  owing  to  the  fact  that,  however 
clumsy  in  the  application,  it  appeals  in  principle  to  the  inborn,  sturdy 
democratism  of  the  Russian  nature,  which  boasts  that  "it  has  no  nonsense 
about  it.''  "  Be  a  worker,  not  a  drone  ;  service  and  knowledge,  not  birth," 
is  the  demand  made  of  each  member  of  the  community  ;  "  what  is  he  ?  "  not 
"  who  is  he  ?  "  the  ever  ready  question.  Both  these  feelings — respect  for 
personal  merit,  contempt  for  claims  based  on  the  achievements  of  others — 
are  embodied  in  the  famous  apologue,  The  Geese,  of  our  great  fabulist, 
Kryl6f,  as  perfect  a  representative  and  exponent  of  the  Russian  spirit, 
as  Lafontaine,  with  whom,  both  as  writer  and  man,  he  has  remarkable 
affinities,  was  of  the  national  French  spirit.  We  will  give  the  apologue 
complete  (in  Mr.  Ralston's  translation)  for  our  readers'  delectation  and 
to  complete  their  comprehension  of  the  complicated  subject  treated  in  the 
present  chapter. 

"  A  peasant,  with  a  long  rod  in  his  hand,  was  driving  some  geese  to  a 
town  where  they  were  to  be  sold  ;  and,  to  tell  the  truth,  he  did  not  treat 
them  over-politely.  In  hopes  of  making  a  good  bargain,  he  was  hastening 
on  so  as  not  to  lose  the  market-day  (and  when  gain  is  concerned,  geese  and 
men  alike  are  apt  to  suflFer).  I  do  not  blame  the  peasant ;  but  the  geese 
talked  about  him  in  a  different  spirit,  and,  whenever  they  met  any  passers- 
by,  abused  him  to  them  in  such  terms  as  these  : 

"  '  Is  it  possible  to  find  any  geese  more  unfortunate  than  we  are  ?  This 
mujik  harasses  us  so  terribly,  and  chases  us  about  just  as  if  we  were  com- 
mon geese.  The  ignoramus  does  not  know  that  he  ought  to  pay  us  rever- 
ence, seeing  that  we  are  the  noble  descendants  of  those  geese  to  whom 
Rome  was  once  indebted  for  her  salvation,  and  in  whose  honor  even  feast- 
days  were  specially  appointed  there.' 

"  'And  do  you  want  to  have  honor  paid  you  on  that  account?'  a 
passer-by  asked  them. 

"  '  Why,  our  ancestors — -* 


380      THE  EMPIRE  OF  THE   TSARS  AND   THE  RUSSIANS. 

"  '  I  know  that — I  have  read  all  about  it ;  but  I  want  to  know  this— oC 
what  use  have  you  been  yourselves  ?  * 

"  '  Why,  our  ancestors  saved  Rome  ! ' 

"  '  Quite  so  ;  but  what  have  you  done  ?  ' 

"•We?    Nothing.' 

'"Then  what  merit  is  there  in  you  ?  Let  your  ancestors  rest  in  peace 
— they  justly  received  honourable  reward  ;  but  you,  my  friends,  are  only  fit 
to  be  roasted  ! ' 

"It  would  be  easy  to  make  this  fable  still  more  intelligible  ;  but  I  am 
afraid  of  irritating  the  geese." 

Kryl6f  (Ivan  Andr6yevitch),  who  flourished  under  Alexander  I.  and 
Nicolas  ( 1 768-1 844),  was  much  seen  at  court,  where  he  was  a  greater  favor- 
ite with  the  sovereigns  than  with  the  courtiers,  and  often  read  by  imperial 
request  his  latest  productions,  of  which  the  satire  or  pathos  was  brought 
out  by  the  inimitable  humor  of  his  diction.  There  is  a  literary  tradition 
that  when  he  thus  gave  The  Geese  to  a  select  and  only  too  appreciative 
audience,  he  read  or  rather  spoke  the  two  last  lines  as  a  spontaneous  after- 
thought, and,  pausing  after  the  first,  to  send  a  circular  glance  round  the 
company,  added  the  second  with  a  malice  of  eye  and  lip  which  did  not  les- 
sen the  number  of  his  enemies. 


BOOK  VI.     CHAPTER  III. 

Effects  of  the  "  Table  of  Ranks  "  on  the  Nobility — The  Functionary  and  the 
Landlord,  Formerly  Combined  in  the  Person  of  the  Dvorianln,  Fre- 
quently Dissevered  in  the  Nobility  of  our  Day — Hence  Two  Opposite 
Tendencies :  Radicalism  and  Tchindvnism — Revolutionary  Dilettanteism 
— High  Society  and  the  Aristocratic  Circles — The  French  Language 
as  a  Social  Barrier — Cosmopolitism  and  Lack  of  Nationality. 

On  the  Russian  nobility  the  more  than  secular  rule  of  the 
"  Table  of  Ranks  "  has  laid  an  impress  which  not  even  the  aboli- 
tion of  this  oflScial  hierarchy  would  avail  to  remove.  The  strict 
dependence  to  which  it  reduced  the  entire  nobiUty  was  by  no 
means  the  only  result  of  this  institution,  which  estranged  it  from 
the  other  classes,  and  especially  from  the  soil,  the  only  natural 
basis  of  all  lasting  influence.  The  service  of  the  state  drove  the 
nobility  from  their  estates  to  launch  them  in  the  army  or  the 
administration,  in  the  cities  in  every  case,  and  detained  the  better 
part  in  the  capitals,  where  alone  rank  and  importance  were  at- 
tainable. The  rich  landowner,  compelled  to  start  out  on  the 
conquest  of  a  tchin,  left  his  property  in  the  hands  of  stewards  who 
frequently  ruined  him  by  their  ill  management  or  their  dishonesty. 
The  institution  which  bound  the  dvoricinstvo  to  the  service  of  the 
state  thus  at  the  same  time  loosened  his  ties  to  soil  and  hearth, 
and  did  much  to  cast  him  adrift.  The  ' '  Table  of  Ranks ' ' 
robbed  of  all  social  influence  the  very  nobility  it  had  created. 
Hence  the  loathing  of  a  portion  of  this  same  tchin-hom  nobility 
for  the  parent  that  kept  them  in  a  perpetual  nonage  and  forbade 
all  thoughts  of  emancipation. 

According  to  the  law,  as  established  by  Peter  the  Great,  a 
family  which,   for  two  successive  generations,   abstained  from 

381 


382       THE   EMPIRE   OF   THE    TSARS  AND   THE  RUSSIANS. 

public  service,  forfeited  its  nobiliary  rights.  Peter  III.  set  the 
dvorihnstvo  free  from  this  obligation.  Nowadays,  if  most  nobles 
still  enter  service,  they  stay  there  but  a  short  time.  After  a  few 
years  of  youth  spent  in  the  Guards  or  in  a  civil  career,  such 
gentlemen  as  are  endowed  with  an  independent  fortime  devote 
themselves  freely  to  study  or  pleasure,  to  work  or  rest.  This  is 
how  we  can  at  present  make  out  two  vocations,  two  different  types 
of  men  in  the  nobility,  and,  consequently,  two  parallel  currents  of 
ideas.  As  not  every  noble  landowner  nowadays  remains  in  '.'  the 
service,"  as  not  every  public  servant  obtains  landed  property,  as 
well  as  nobility,  the  two  qualities,  the  two  social  functions,  for- 
merly united  and  co-ordinate  in  the  body  of  the  dvorid,nstvo,  have 
now  been  severed  and  have  entered  a  stage  of  more  or  less  overt 
antagonism.  Since  they  are  no  longer  the  two  aspects  of  one 
and  the  same  man,  the  landlord  and  the  functionary,  the 
pomiish-tchik  and  the  tchinbvnik  occasionally  become  rivals. 

In  the  great  landowner,  free  of  his  time  and  fortune,  new 
aspirations  are  coming  to  light,  aristocratic  pretensions,  more  or 
less  discreetly  advanced  in  the  name  of  the  rights  of  culture  and 
property,  ostensibly  based  on  conservative  considerations,  on  the 
interests  of  social  order  and  the  throne.  In  the  functionary,  held 
in  the  dependence  of  service  by  lack  of  means,  survives  the  old- 
time  spirit  of  the  tchin^  occasionally  surging  up  into  instincts  of 
equality,  of  levelling,  more  or  less  openly  acknowledged,  in  the 
name  of  the  rights  of  intellect  and  personal  merit,  and  ostensibly 
based  on  the  love  of  progress,  on  the  interests  of  the  state  and  the 
people.  Of  these  two  men,  the  former  is  naturally  more  of  an 
aristocrat,  and  frequently  more  of  a  liberal ;  the  latter  more  of  a 
democrat,  but  also  more  of  a  martinet. 

The  two  rivals  are  both  quite  right  :  they  represent  and 
embody  two  tendencies  which  are  at  odds  in  every  society.  The 
one — the  great  landowner — ^has  on  his  side  and  in  his  favor  the 
apprehensions  inspired  by  the  instability  of  affairs  and  the  revolu- 
tions of  Western  Europe ;  also  the  conservative  scares  and  secret 


NOBILITY  AND   TCHIN.  383 

influences  at  court.  The  other — the  functionary — has  the  advan- 
tage that  he  represents  more  faithfully  the  national  tradition  and 
at  the  same  time  follows  the  most  manifest  drift  of  modern  civili- 
zation. The  tchiribvnik  throws  in  the  face  of  the  landlord,  with 
his  aristocratical  pretensions,  a  shortness  of  memory  as  to  the  fact 
that  he  himself,  as  a  rule,  holds  his  rights  and  lands  only  from 
state  service.  The  Russian  nobility,  indeed,  such  as  it  was  fash- 
ioned by  history,  is  a  sort  of  double-faced  Janus  :  on  one  side  the 
face  of  the  noble  and  landowner ;  on  the  other  the  face  of  the 
functionary  or  bureaucrat ;  and  when  one  face  looks  at  itself  in  the 
glass,  it  is  tempted  to  forget  ' '  the  other ' '  at  the  back. 

In  the  eyes  of  certain  Russian  aristocrats  the  bureaucrat  has 
grown  into  the  natural  adversary,  the  hereditary  foe.  It  is  him, 
it  is  tchiribvnism,  as  embodied  in  Nicolas  Miliutin,  that  a  number 
of  landholders  hold  responsible  for  the  sacrifices  imposed  on  the 
former  lords  by  the  liberation  of  the  serfs.  The  tchinbvnik,  espe- 
cially of  humble  origin,  frequently  taken  out  of  the  rank  of  semi- 
narists— the  class  which  one  of  its  noble  adversaries  scornfully 
refers  to  as  the  "crimped  and  curled  proletariate," — is  the  target 
at  which  are  aimed  all  the  sarcasms  of  a  world  which  yet  does  not 
itself  always  keep  out  of  the  service.  And  yet,  as  a  witty  writer, 
Samarin  remarks  :  "  The  noble  is  just  a  bureaucrat  in  a  dressing- 
gown,  while  the  bureaucrat  is  a  noble  in  uniform."  This  his- 
torical truth  does  not  always  prevent  mutual  envy  and  ill-will 
between  the  two,  although,  even  yet,  they  are  often  one  man  ;  the 
distinction  lies  between  the  needy  tchinbvnik  and  the  wealthy 
pomiish-tchik.  In  the  higher  nobility  there  is  a  marked  tendency 
to  restore  the  close  union  of  landholder  and  functionary,  but  in  a 
manner  the  reverse  of  the  old  Moscovite  tradition,  i.  e.,  by  mak- 
ing authority  and  power  dependent  on  property,  not  rank  and 
property  on  state  service. 

The  aristocracy  numbers  its  most  determined  opponents 
amidst  the  legal  gentry,  which  would  seem  to  be  naturally  sub- 
servient to  it.     Too  numerous,  poor,  and  mixed  to  expect  a  share 


384      THE  EMPIRE  OF  THE   TSARS  AND    THE  RUSSIANS. 

of  aristocratical  privileges,  the  bulk  of  the  nobility  does  not  forgive 
such  of  its  members  as  dream  of  prerogatives  in  which  all  could 
not  share.  Out  of  the  tchin  and  small  land  gentry  issued  a  needy 
and  envious  nobility,  a  semi-cultured  proletariate  which  civiliza- 
tion has  endowed  with  more  wants  and  covetous  longings  than 
means  of  enjoyment  or  instruction.  In  Russia,  this  class,  the 
most  restless  and  embittered  all  the  world  over,  is  the  offspring 
of  either  the  nobility  or  the  clergy,  and  comes  out  of  the  govern- 
ment ofl&ces  or  the  church  seminaries.  The  students  who  are  so 
fond  of  dazzling  the  eyes  of  the  ignorant  with  the  glitter  of  an 
approaching  golden  age  imshackled  by  property  or  family,  are 
mostly  nobles ;  so  are  nearly  all  the  young  men  who  go  about 
distributing  among  the  peasants  and  laboring-men  revolutionary 
primers  and  catechisms.  Nobles,  too,  are  the  emigrants  or 
refugees  who,  in  the  clandestine  press  of  the  interior  or  in  the 
Russian  publications  edited  abroad,  preach  to  their  countrymen 
revolution  and  socialism  ;  and  nobles  are  the  greater  number  of 
those  champions  of  demagogy  of  both  sexes,  at  home  or  abroad, 
who  set  themselves  up  as  apostles  of  nihilism. 

It  is  not  only  on  the  lower  rungs  of  the  social  ladder,  on  the 
threshold,  so  to  speak,  of  official  nobility,  that  these  radical  ten- 
dencies confront  us,  but  frequently  much  higher,  in  families 
placed  by  rank  or  fortune  above  the  jealousy  and  cupidity  proper 
to  the  lower  middle  classes.  Nor  is  this  merely  the  result  of  a 
national  propensity  towards  theorizing  radicalism,  or  of  the  blind 
and  reckless  generosity  natural  to  youth,  which,  all  over  the 
world,  hankers  after  risky  and  advanced  ideas,  as  those  that  ap- 
pear to  it  the  noblest  and  bravest.  To  look  closely  into  the 
matter,  this  phenomenon  is  not  as  singular  as  it  may  seem  at  first 
sight.  More  than  one  Western  coimtry  might,  at  certain  given 
epochs,  have  supplied  material  for  observations  of  the  same  kind. 
As  long  as  revolutionary  ideas  still  retain  something  speculative 
about  them,  as  long  as  they  have  not  passed  the  test  of  practice, 
they  easily  find  partisans  in  the  midst  of  the  very  classes  that  are 


NOBILITY  AND    TCHIN.  385 

marked  for  their  victims.  Much  painful  experience  is  needed,  to 
teach  the  young  of  the  nobility  and  the  bourgeoisie  to  resist  its 
inclination  towards  all  things  new,  towards  overbold  thought  and 
humanitarian  dreamings.  Russia,  until  quite  lately,  had  been 
almost  entirely  spared  these  costly  lessons  ;  but  then  nations, 
like  individuals,  seldom  benefit  by  any  but  their  own  experience. 
Men  who  have  never  felt  the  earth  quake  under  their  feet,  gaily 
engage  on  a  run  amid  the  misty  mazes  of  theory.  On  the  thick  ice 
of  northern  winters,  which  he  never  heard  crack  beneath  his  tread, 
the  skater  fearlessly  indulges  in  the  maddest  flourishes.  In  this 
respect  Russian  society  more  than  once  presented  the  same  spec- 
tacle as  the  French  aristocracy  just  before  the  Revolution,  so  that 
many  of  the  traits  in  the  brilliantly  life-like  picture  presented  in 
Taine's  Ancien  Rigime  apply  perfectly  to  the  society  of  St. 
Petersburgh  during  the  eighteenth  century.  There,  too,  the 
beau  nwnde  for  quite  awhile  loved  to  play  with  ideas:  "good 
society  "  juggled  the  more  freely  with  the  most  inflammable  or 
explosive  of  them,  that  they  were  not  likely  to  burst  on  the 
thickly  carpeted  drawing-room  floors,  and  that  the  walls  of  the 
splendid  private  palaces  held  no  hiding-places  for  combustibles. 

There  was  another  reason  besides  to  all  this  boldness  and  reck- 
lessness. The  nobility,  the  cultivated  class,  while  trained  to  the 
customs  and  ways  of  thinking  of  Europe,  could  not  freely  practise 
them  after  the  European  manner,  and  therefore  felt  constrained 
and  oppressed  in  the  very  country  where  it  held  so  privileged  a 
position.  Superior  education  only  made  the  moral  inferiority  of 
Russian  life  more  keenly  felt.  In  Russia  as  it  was  before  the  late 
reforms,  a  cultivated  man  felt  the  lack  of  air  and  elbow-room  ;  he 
easily  passed  from  a  state  of  morbid  depression  to  one  of  no  less 
morbid  exaltation, — from  the  numbness  of  prostration  to  the  high 
pressure  of  fever.  True,  the  reforms  have  greatly  lightened  the 
social  atmosphere  ;  yet  civilized  man  cannot  always  fill  his  lungs 
to  their  full  capacity  ;  he  often  experiences  a  vague  and  irritating 

feeling  of  discomfort.     There  as  everywhere  else  it  is  reserved  to 
25 


386      THE  EMPIRE   OF   THE    TSARS  AND   THE  RUSSIANS. 

the  growth  and  free  practice  of  public  liberties  to  weaken  the 
revolutionary  spirit. 

It  was  impossible  that,  in  the  midst  of  so  accessible,  so  motley 
an  assemblage  as  this  Russian  dvoricinstvo,  there  should  not  be 
deposited  and  crystallize  a  narrower,  more  exclusive  society, 
jealously  keeping  aloof  from  its  surroundings,  anxious  to  rise 
above  the  plebs  of  the  ichin,  which  threatened  a  general  levelling. 
In  this  sense,  there  does  exist  an  aristocracy  in  Russia,  based  on 
manners,  position,  family — an  aristocracy  of  the  drawing-room, 
of  which  the  members  know  one  another  not  by  titles  and  heraldic 
bearings,  but  by  connections  and  bringing  up.  For  even  in  this 
exalted  sphere,  so  full  of  the  consciousness  of  its  own  superiority, 
caste-spirit  and  birth-prejudice  are  less  controlling  than  in  most 
other  monarchies.  There  are  in  it  old  families  and  families  of 
recent  date, — large  fortunes  and  mere  competences.  Birth,  wealth, 
position,  intellect — all  these,  to  be  sure,  smooth  the  way  into  this 
social  sanctum,  but  none  of  these  things  alone  can  open  it  with 
unfailing  key.  This  drawing-room  aristocracy  is  the  more  exclu- 
sive, or  rather  the  more  guardedly  reserved,  that,  having  no  legally 
determined  boundaries,  it  is  compelled  to  defend  the  line  it  has 
itself  drawn.  Almost  everywhere  in  Europe  one  of  the  results  of 
victorious  democracy,  next  to  the  overthrow  of  the  old  landmarks, 
is  to.  raise  around  * '  society ' '  gossamer  barriers  woven  of  threads 
so  light  and  delicate  as  to  be  imperceptible  to  the  vulgar  eye,  and 
these  are  of  all  the  most  indestructible.  Nowhere,  perhaps,  does 
this  art  of  keeping  up  real  distinctions  in  the  midst  of  nominal 
equality,  an  art,  which  marks  distances  so  effectively, — nowhere 
does  this  science  of  society  manners  and  conventionalities  reign 
supreme  as  in  Russia.' 

'  Could  this  not  stand  just  as  it  is  for  a  picture  and  explanation  of  Ameri- 
can society, — the  "upper  ten  thousand"  of  it?  It  is  thus  that,  by  piercing 
into  the  essence  and  core  of  things,  one  gradually  discovers  the  innumer- 
able subtle  affinities  that  are  at  the  root  of  the  strange  and,  to  the  unphilo- 
sophical  observer,  puzzling  sympathy  which  mutually  draws  two  seemingly  so 
different  countries  as  Russia  and  America. 


NOBILITY  AND  TCHIN.  387 

The  Russian  nobility  prides  itself  on  its  culture  and  takes  pleas- 
ure in  referring  to  itself  as  "the  cultivated  class;"  the  "upper 
crust ' '  improves  on  this  claim  and  pushes  culture  to  the  verge  of 
hyper-refinement.  The  very  manner  in  which  European  civiliza- 
tion was  introduced  into  Russia  laid  it  open  to  a  twofold  danger  : 
it  could  not  but  remain  for  a  long  time  an  alien  and  a  surface 
thing.  These  two  defects  were  historically  unavoidable,  and  the 
national  bent,  the  aristocratic  instincts,  the  desire  to  operate  a 
reaction  against  the  tchin^  intensified  and  confirmed  them.  The 
more  imminently  the  dominant  class  was  threatened  with  a  flood 
of  parvenus,  the  more  it  strove  to  keep  them  at  a  distance ;  the 
easier  official  assimilation,  the  harder  social  assimilation  was  made 
to  them.  Thence  the  great  importance  attached  to  foreign 
languages,  especially  to  French. 

French  in  Russia  was  not  so  much  an  instrument  of  study,  a 
means  of  instruction,  as  a  sign  of  higher  education.  It  was  the 
polished  language,  that  of  society  and  the  drawing-room,  the 
standard  and  test  of  culture  and  "  tone."  For  this,  it  was  not 
sufficient  to  understand  French  and  speak  it  like  any  foreign 
language ;  purity  of  accent,  ease  of  elocution,  were  accounted 
essentials ;  for  French  was  before  and  above  everything  else  a 
shibboleth,  a  token  of  social  free-masonry,  a  barrier  to  keep  in- 
truders out.  No  society,  no  aristocracy  legally  open  to  all,  could 
possibly  barricade  itself  more  efficiently.  French  became  a  sort 
of  society  passport,  without  which  no  naturalization  papers  could 
be  obtained  in  the  higher  circles.  There  would  have  been  no 
great  harm  in  that,  but  for  the  fact  that  the  habitual  use  of  a 
foreign  language  became  the  sign  and  symbol  of  foreign  habits, 
ideas,  and  afiectations. 

In  the  spheres  naturally  the  most  aristocratic,  this  anti-national 
craze,  confirmed  and  transmitted  by  heredity,  threatened  to  develop 
into  a  constitutional  taint.  The  high  and  middling  nobility,  the 
cultivated  class,  prompted  by  fashion,  "tone,"  ("good  form"  it 
would  be  called  now),  by  exclusivism,  widened  the  chasm  that 


388      THE  EMPIRE  OF   THE   TSARS  AND   THE  RUSSIANS. 

separated  it  from  the  masses,  not  perceiving  that  it  was  aggravat- 
ing the  disease  of  modem  Russia,  not  realizing  that,  for  classes  as 
well  as  individuals,  isolation  means  weakness.  With  face  forever 
turned  toward  the  frontier,  Russian  society  ended  by  not  seeing 
Russia  any  more,  or,  at  all  events,  not  comprehending  her.  Open 
to  every  breath  from  the  West,  it  grew  cosmopolitan  and  lived  as 
an  alien  in  its  own  native  land,  somewhat  after  the  fashion  of  an 
European  colony  in  the  midst  of  barbarians.  By  sheer  contact  with 
the  West.by  dint  of  dyeing  and  anointing  itself  with  imported  ideas, 
the  man  of  the  world  lost  all  trace  of  national  coloring  ;  his  suc- 
cess in  society  was  in  proportion  as  the  Russian  was  most  com- 
.  pletely  obliterated  in  him.  Brought  up  by  French  or  German 
tutors,  in  ignorance  or  contempt  of  all  that  was  indigenous,  the 
heir  of  the  Moscovite  boyhrs  came  to  look  on  his  father's  tongue 
as  a  boors'  dialect,  or  rather  patois.  * '  I  have  been  married  twenty- 
five  years,"  said  a  Russian  gentleman  to  me,  "  and  I  am  not  sure 
that  I  have  addressed  my  wife  in  Russian  twice."  The  time  is 
not  so  far  behind  us,  when  almost  any  well-bred  man  might  have 
said  as  much.  This  contempt  for  the  Russian  people  was  extended 
to  the  Russian  books,  which  was  a  great  hindrance  to  the  growth 
of  the  young  national  literature, — a  drawback  which,  added  to  the 
craze  of  servile  imitation,  accounts  for  its  prolonged,  pallid  infancy.* 

'So  far  from  being  overdrawn,  this  sketch  gives  an  inadequate  idea  of  the 
state  of  things  it  depicts  and  of  which  even  we  of  my  generation  were  the 
victims  in  childhood,  especially  the  girls.  No  faidt  was  so  severely  punished 
as  a  word  spoken  in  Russian  to  anybody  but  the  servants.  The  discovery  of 
a  book  of  Zola  in  a  convent  cell  could  scarcely  cause  greater  horror  and  com- 
motion than  that  of  an  inoflfensive  Russian  book  in  a  schoolgirl's  room.  I 
myself  learned  Russian  when  I  was  about  ten  or  eleven,  fluently  using 
French,  German,  Italian,  and  English,  and  spoke  it  at  first  with  a  purely 
French  accent  which  was  the  delight  of  my  elders,  and  which  only  my  own 
common-sense  made  me  feel  ashamed  and  get  rid  of,  to  their  great  concern. 
I  was  just  past  twenty  when  I  discovered  my  country,  my  people,  their  his- 
tory, and  literature.  It  was  on  returning  fiom  an  almost  life-long  residence 
abroad,  in  the  middle  of  the  sixties,  when  I  found  our  national  Renaissance 
in  full  swing.  The  revelation  was  dazzling  and  my  intense  joy  in  it  only 
comparable  to  my  sorrow — remorse  it  could  not  be,  not  being  my  own  doing 
— for  the  time  and  all  I  had  lost. 


NOBILITY  AND    TCHIN.  389 

The  nobility  at  length  felt  how  debilitating  for  Russian  civiliza- 
tion, especially  for  the  so-called,  "cultivated  class,"  was  this 
unnatural  denationalization  and  this  superficial  cosmopolitism. 
Already  under  Nicolas  a  marked  reaction  took  place  in  literature, 
in  public  opinion,  in  private  feeling,  although  not  yet  in  the  ideas 
and  manners,  and,  like  all  reactions,  it  soon  tipped  over  to  the 
opposite  extreme.  Under  the  influence  of  the  Slavophils,  the 
Russian  name,  the  Russian  language,  the  Russian  man  were 
restored  to  honor.  Some  fanatics  or  eccentrics,  like  the  poet 
Khomiak6f,  went  the  length  of  parading  the  sleeveless  armihk  and 
the  kafthn.  Nationality,  so  long  scorned  and  trodden  down,  became 
universally  glorified.  Fashion  and  the  readiness  of  society  to  take 
up  ' '  crazes ' '  had  much  to  do  with  this  sudden  revulsion.  But 
even  where  conversion  is  sincerest  it  is  often  unenlightened  and 
inconsistent.  After  having  so  long  held  aloof  and  played  at  cos- 
mopolitism, the  higher  classes  could  not  all  in  a  moment  divest 
themselves  of  the  second  nature  which  they  had  so  laboriously 
cultivated.  After  having  kept  themselves  estranged  from  the 
people  for  a  century  and  a  half,  they  could  not  clear  at  one  bound 
the  chasm  which  they  had  so  long  and  patiently  dug  with  their 
own  hands. 

And  now  the  two  uneven  halves  of  the  nation  are  still  morally 
estranged,  to  their  mutual  harm  and  that  of  the  country  and  of 
civilization.  There  are  only  two  ways  out  of  such  a  situation. 
One  is  to  recognize  officially,  to  sanction  legally  the  scission  of  the 
two  classes,  by  placing  the  one  under  the  other's  guardianship. 
The  other  is  to  create  an  intermediate  class  for  the  purpose  of 
bringing  the  other  two  together  and  serving  as  link  between  them. 
Of  these  two  alternatives,  the  first  has  in  its  favor  the  aristocratical 
theories  and  artificial  combinations  which,  in  one  or  other  form, 
tend  to  place  the  people  under  the  exclusive  control  of  the  nobility 
and  of  the  landlords  ;  the  other  has  for  it  the  facts,  the  drift  of 
civilization,  and  the  natural  creation  of  a  middle  class,  a  bourgeoisie, 
of  which  the  nucleus  is  already  formed. 


BOOK  VI.     CHAPTER  IV. 

Personal  Privileges  of  the  Nobles,  and  Prerogatives  of  their  Order — What 
Emancipation  has  Taken  from  the  Nobles  besides  Landed  Property — 
The  Dvoridnstvo  Threatened  with  Gradual  Expropriation — How,  though 
not  Despoiled,  it  Practically  Lost  all  its  Privileges — Importance  of  the 
Prerogatives  Conferred  on  the  "  Nobiliary  Assemblies  "  by  Catherine  II. 
— Why  they  did  not  Manage  to  Benefit  by  them — Has  Russia  the  Ele- 
ments of  a  Political  Aristocracy  ? 

A  NOBILITY  can  have  two  kinds  of  privileges  :  personal,  which 
each  noble  enjoys  individually ;  collective,  belonging  to  all  the 
nobles  as  a  body.  The  law  awards  the  Russian  dvorictnstvo 
prerogatives  of  both  kinds,  both  greatly  reduced  in  our  day  by 
the  extension  of  public  liberty.  The  nobiUty,  as  a  rule,  has  not 
been  despoiled  of  its  rights  ;  but  that  which  was  the  privilege  of 
one  class  has  become  the  right  of  all.  Its  prerogatives,  collective 
or  personal,  the  dvoricLnstvo  held  not  from  the  will  of  the  rest  of 
the  nation,  nor  from  its  own  achievements  or  ancestral  conquests, 
but  wholly  and  entirely  as  a  gift  of  sovereign  bounty,  and  they 
were  all  comparatively  recent  still  when  they  were  extended  to 
the  rest  of  the  nation.  Before  Catherine  II.  the  nobility  had  no 
sort  of  corporative  rights,  and  if  the  nobles  did  claim  some  indi- 
vidual rights,  they  were  ill-defined  and  ill-observed. 

The  nobles  were  not  only,  like  all  the  rest,  subject  to  the 
sovereign's  will  and  pleasure ;  there  was  no  coarse  fireak  of  whim 
or  impertinent  fancy  which  the  sovereigns  or  their  favorites 
scrupled  to  indulge  in  at  the  expense  of  members  of  the  most 
illustrious  families.  The  reign  of  Anna  Iv^novna  and  Biron  is 
full  of  instructive  anecdotes  to  the  point.  The  inheritors  of  the 
greatest  names  could  be  compelled  to  play  clown  for  the  delec- 

390 


NOBILITY  AND    TCHIN.  39I 

tation  of  the  court.  One  day,  wishing  to  punish  a  Prince  Galitsyn 
for  some  trifling  misdemeanor,  the  Empress  Anna  ordered  him  to 
personate  a  hen,  and  the  descendant  of  the  Yagellons  actually  had 
publicly  to  squat  on  a  heap  of  straw  and  make  believe  to  hatch 
eggs,  imitating  the  clucking  of  a  sitting  hen.  Another  time  her 
fit  of  pleasantry  was  not  so  harmless,  when  she  forced  the  same 
Galitsyn  to  wed  an  idiotic  old  woman.  Such  freaks  show  what 
respect,  what  authority  the  high  nobility  enjoyed  in  the  middle  of 
the  eighteenth  century,  under  the  reign  of  the  very  princess  whose 
power  those  same  Galitsyns  and  the  Dolgor^kis  had  at  one  time 
attempted  to  limit  in  favor  of  a  kind  of  oligarchy. 

Up  to  the  last  reforms  of  the  reign  of  Alexander  II.  the  nobles 
were  in  the  personal  enjoyment  of  only  three  main  privileges,  and 
even  these  they  had  long  shared  with  the  so-called  ' '  privileged 
classes,"  i.  e.,  with  the  clergy  and  the  merchants.  They  were  , 
exempt  from  military  conscription,  from  direct  or  poll-taxes,  and  h 
from  corporal  chastisement.  Of  these  three  immunities  the  first 
fell  away  in  1876,  when  universal  military  service  was  introduced  ; 
the  last  has  been  extended  to  all  classes ;  the  second  also  has 
already  ceased  to  be  a  privilege,  the  abolition  of  the  poll-tax 
having  been  decided  on  by  Alexander  III.  For  the  mujik  as  well 
as  for  the  noble  landowner,  a  property  tax  is  to  be  substituted  to 
the  tax  on  persons.  The  Russian  nobility  has  no  immunity  from 
taxes.  In  the  times  of  serfdom,  the  poll-tax  indirectly  fell  on 
the  nobility,  who  were  responsible  for  their  serfs,  and  now  that 
their  estates  are  curtailed  by  the  emancipation,  they  are  directly  * 
subject  to  taxation.  The  burdens  that  weigh  on  the  noble  land- 
owners are  even  now,  it  is  true,  less  heavy  than  those  borne  by  the 
peasant  communes ;  but  this  difference  comes  partly  from  the 
difference  in  the  constitution  of  property,  partly  from  a  just  con- 
sideration for  the  interests  of  the  nobility,  which  has  been  sorely 
tried  by  the  emancipation  itself  and  the  succeeding  period  of 
transition.  As  to  the  exemption  from  corporal  punishments,  now 
extended  to  all  classes,  two  things  astonish  one :  that  it  should  so 


392      THE  EMPIRE  OF  THE   TSARS  AND   THE  RUSSIANS. 

long  have  been  a  privilege,  and  that  the  nobility  should  have  ac« 
quired  it  so  late.  Scarcely  a  century  did  it  rejoice  in  it,  and  it 
was  put  in  possession  of  it  only  some  twenty  years  sooner  than  the 
town-merchants.  It  was  Peter  III.,  Catherine  II's  husband  and 
predecessor,  who,  in  1762,  delivered  it  from  the  cudgel  and  the 
knut.  As  long,  however,  as  the  rods  were  not  suppressed  for  all, 
even  the  noble  was  not  wholly  safe  from  them.  To  make  him 
liable  to  corporal  chastisement,  nothing  more  was  needed  than  a 
condemnation  which  degraded  him  from  his  nobiliary  rights,  or 
an  order  to  serve  in  the  army  as  common  soldier. 

In  the  same  way  as  the  immunity  from  corporal  punishment, 
the  greatest  part  of  the  rights  and  privileges  ensured  by  the  code 
to  the  nobility  are  of  a  nature  to  be  easily  extended  to  all  the 
other  classes  of  the  nation,  which  shows  that  they  were  not,  in 
reality,  nobiliary  prerogatives,  but  only  freemen's  rights,  such  as 
a  civilized  country  recognizes  as  belonging  to  all  its  inhabitants. 
The  dvorianiriy  says  the  law,  cannot  be,  without  a  trial,  deprived  of 
life,  or  of  the  rights  belonging  to  his  class,  nor  yet  of  his  posses- 
sions. Such  articles  of  the  law  help  one  to  comprehend  the 
notions  about  nobility  of  such  Slavs  as  have  remained  untouched 
by  the  passion  of  imitating  the  aristocratic  West.  The  Serbs,  for 
instance,  since  their  deliverance  from  the  Ottoman  yoke,  take 
pride  in  saying  that  all  Serbs  are  now  noble,  which  means — free- 
men.    In  this  sense,  the  Russians  will  soon  all  be  nobles  too. 

The  real,  substantial  privilege  of  the  Russian  nobility,  that 
which,  belonging  to  that  class  alone,  gave  it  a  distinctive  charac- 
ter, was  the  right  of  owning  "  inhabited  lands,"  i.  e.,  lands  peo- 
pled with  serfs.  The  efliancipation  has  carried  away  that  privilege 
along  with  serfdom,  but  could  not  quite  obliterate  the  traces  of 
what  had  existed  for  nearly  three  centuries.  To  this  prerogative 
the  nobility  owed,  down  to  our  day,  the  almost  exclusive  monopoly 
of  landed  property,  individual  and  hereditary.  The  day  after  the 
emancipation  there  were,  outside  of  the  lands  it  retained  in  its 
hands,  only  those  just  made  over  to  the  emancipated  peasants, 


NOBILITY  AND    TCHIN.  393 

and  the  immense  ' '  state  demesnes. ' '  In  every-day  language  the 
term  "landlord" — pomihh-tchik  —  is  still  synonymous  with 
"noble," — dvorianln.  It  is  from  this  quality  of  individual  land- 
lord that  the  dvorihnstvo  derives  one  of  its  chief  claims  on  the 
sympathies  of  Western  countries,  where  the  same  mode  of  land 
tenure  is  customary.  Compared  to  the  mujik,  who  merely  has 
the  use  of  collective  property,  the  pomiish-tchik  may  be  looked  on 
as  the  representative  of  personality,  of  modem  individualism,  as 
well  as  of  European  culture.  It  is  also  from  the  same  sotuce  that, 
in  renovated  Russia,  the  nobility  derives  its  importance  as  well  as 
its  claims.  It  has  to-day  what  it  lacked  in  the  Middle  Ages  :  a 
basis  of  influence  in  the  soil ;  and  it  is  on  this  relatively  recent 
basis  that  the  theorizing  partisans  of  hierarchy  would  like  to  rise, 
for  the  good  of  the  richer  nobility,  a  sort  of  landed  aristocracy. 
What  is  needed  to  give  such  views  as  these  a  chance  of  success,  to 
insure,  in  this  rural  and  agricultural  country,  the  rule  of  the  great 
landlord,  the  noble  pomihh-tchik  f  In  the  first  place,  property  \ 
should  be  more  stable  and  the  monopoly  of  it  should  be  guaran- 
teed to  the  nobility  in  the  future  as  it  was  in  the  past.  Now  there 
is  nothing  of  the  kind.  With  serfdom  and  the  designation  ' '  inhab- 
ited lands,"  fell  the  only  barrier  which  defended  the  noble  land-  \ 
lord  against  the  encroachments  of  the  other  classes.                                / 

But  for  this  protection,  but  for  this  sort  of  legal  prohibition,  the 
greater  part  of  the  land  would  have  slipped  from  the  dvorihnstvo*  s 
hold  long  ago, — as  proved  by  the  burdened  condition  of  landed 
property  on  the  very  eve  of  the  emancipation.     In  1859,  nigh  on  \ 
two  thirds  of  it  ( AV)  were  mortgaged  in  the  lombards,  as  the  state  \ 
credit  institutions  are  called,  and  the  remaining  third  was  in  great    ) 
part  mortgaged  to  private  persons.     Had  there  been  in  Russia  at 
the  moment  of  the  abolition  of  serfdom,  a  nimierous  and  wealthy 
middle  class,  the  first  order  of  the  state  would  have  been  despoiled  of 
the  greater  portion  of  its  estates.     As  it  was,  the  absence  of  competi- 
tion, the  scarcity  of  available  capital,  the  penury  of  the  peasants 
—all  these  favorable  conditions  did  not  avail  to  maintain  it  in 


394      7Wj5  empire  of  the    tsars  and  the  RUSSIANS. 

the  possession  of  all  the  lands  that  were  not  taken  from  it  legally. 
It  has  been  calculated  that  the  nobility  lost  one  fourth  of  its 
estates  since  the  emancipation, — in  some  provinces  even  more. 
The  Emperor  Alexander  III.,  to  help  them  out,  instituted  a  special 
bank,  which  lends  on  land  at  reduced  rates  of  interest.  Unfor- 
tunately, such  facilities  often  prove  ruinous  temptations :  the 
easier  to  borrow,  the  deeper  the  nobility  gets  into  debt. 

There  is  then  already  a  noticeable  tendency  in  landed  property 
to  change  hands,  to  the  prejudice  of  the  dvorihnstvo.  To  rescue 
its  old  land  monopoly,  there  is  really  but  one  thing  to  do  :  to 
entail  the  lands  and  thus  make  them  inalienable.  The  expedient 
would  be  unfailing,  and  there  have  been  men  bold  enough  to  pro- 
pose it.  But  such  a  proceeding  applied  to  the  totality  or  generality 
of  private  estates  would  only  tend  to  propagate  the  inconveniences 
inseparable  from  entails  and  to  paralyze  property,  capital,  in  fact 
the  country.  Individuals  may  yield  to  the  temptation  of  placing 
their  name  and  their  descendants  beyond  the  reach  of  ruin  and 
above  the  chances  of  competition  ;  a  modem  government  will 
never  allow  one  class  to  insure  to  itself  for  all  time  the  possession 
of  the  soil.  And  yet,  in  Russia  as  elsewhere,  the  legal  and  indis- 
soluble bond  of  entail  is  the  one  thing  that  can  insure  to  the 
nobility  this  exclusive  possession.  No  longer  protected  against 
itself  and  others  by  the  impossibility  of  selling  to  members  of 
another  class,  nor  by  the  system  of  succession,  the  Russian  nobility 
|/is  threatened  with  slow  expropriation  in  favor  of  a  middle  class 
or  of  the  peasantry,  both  of  which  lay  hands  on  a  larger  share  of 
the  lands  each  year  at  its  expense  ;  and,  together  with  the  monop- 
oly of  individual  land-holding,  it  will  lose  its  distinctive  character, 
all  social  preponderance, — nay,  all  reason  for  existing  at  all.  * 

*  Another  thing  contributes  to  lessen  the  influence  of  the  nobility :  it  is 
the  small  number  of  wealthy  landlords  residing  on  their  own  estates.  So 
that  certain  political  writers  with  aristocratical  tendencies — Prince  Miesh- 
tchersky  for  example, — while  claiming  the  principal  local  functions  for  the 
landed  nobility  of  each  gjiven  district,  propose,  more  or  less  seriously,  that 
the  nobles  should  be  bound  to  reside  on  their  lands  during  a  certain  portion 
of  each  year. 


NOBILITY  AND    TCHIN.  395 

After  the  ancient  prerogatives  have  fallen  off  one  by  one,  or 
degenerated  into  fictions,  what  will  remain  to  this  nobility,  shorn 
of  privileges,  to  distinguish  it  from  the  rest  of  the  nation  ?  Very 
little.  So  little,  that  the  question  obtrudes  itself:  what  woidd  the 
nobles  lose  if  the  nobility  were  to  be  suppressed  ?  Nobody  inten- 
tionally raised  a  hand  against  it ;  nobody  thought  of  despoiling 
it  in  any  way  ;  yet  the  dvorihnstvo  saw  nearly  all  its  rights  drop 
from  it — by  the  mere  fact  of  the  changes  that  took  place  around  it. 
The  nobility  practically  found  itself  abrogated  by  the  reforms  of 
Alexander  II. ,  without  being  so  much  as  mentioned  by  name.  If 
it  is  still  standing,  it  is  as  the  tree  stands,  around  whose  foot  the  soil 
has  been  dug  up,  touching  its  roots  by  mistake,  so  that  it  finds  no 
support  in  the  loosened  earth  against  the  first  gust  of  storm  wind. 
Nobility  will  end,  in  Russia  as  in  other  countries,  by  being  a  mere 
honorary  distinction,  without  social  importance  or  political  mean- 
ing, a  bauble  to  flatter  vanity,  with  value  all  the  smaller  for  being 
more  common  and  having  fewer  external  signs  to  facilitate  mutual^ 
recognition.  In  reality  the  dvorianln  has  only  one  personal  privi- \\ 
lege  left,  that  of  enjoying  certain  facilities  for  entering  the  service  / 
of  the  state  and  for  making  his  way  therein  more  rapidly.*  To 
this  latter  advantage  the  nobility  will  perhaps  cling  the  more 
tenaciously  that  the  others  are  slipping  from  them.  Despoiled  of 
their  prerogatives  and  threatened  with  expropriation,  the  im- 
poverished dvorihnstvo  will  have  no  other  refuge  left  but  their 
original  cradle — state  service  and  tchin.  And  even  on  this 
ground,  the  privileges  still  accorded  them  by  law  and  custom 
will  gradually  fall  away  before  the  levelling  of  culture  or  the 
demands  of  equality.     Service,  like  other  careers,  will  have  no 


*  This  privilege  draws  after  it  another  analogous  one — ^that  of  getting 
their  children  admitted  into  certain  educational  establishments,  such  as 
the  Alexander  Lyceum  in  SL  Petersburgh,  or  the  Smolnoy  Institute  of 
Noble  Damsels.  In  1880  the  Alexander  I^yceum,  until  then  reserved  for 
the  more  ancient  portion  of  the  nobility,  was  thrown  open  to  the  entire 
dvorihnstvo,  i.  e.,  to  the  children  of  all  state  functionaries  of  a  certain 
rank. 


39^     THE  EMPIRE  OF   THE    TSARS  AND    THE  RUSSIANS. 

rights  left,  only  favors ;  no  advantages  save  such  as  everywhere 
go  with  credit  and  position.* 

Personal  privileges,  inherent  to  the  individual  and  the  family, 
may  constitute  a  nobility  ;  but  it  needs  common  prerogatives, 
exercised  in  a  body  by  the  entire  class  of  nobles,  to  make  an 
aristocracy.  Of  such  prerogatives  the  dvoridnstvo,  though  weak, 
possessed  several — important  ones,  too.  True,  they  were  no 
bequest  of  a  remote  past,  nor  a  revered  survival  of  ancient 
national  customs,  but  only  an  imitation  of  foreign  things,  a  tardy 
copy  of  already  antiquated  models.  Nothing  of  the  kind  was 
known  to  old  Russia,  where  the  servants  of  the  state  had  no 
rights  save  such  as  they  derived  from  the  service  itself.  As  their 
personal  privileges,  so  their  corporative  rights  were  a  gracious, 
free  concession  from  the  crown.  This,  again,  was  Catherine's 
doing.  Carried  away  by  the  liberal  spirit  of  the  end  of  the 
eighteenth  century,  in  the  interval  between  the  American  War 
of  Independence  and  the  French  Revolution,  she  endowed  the 
Russian  nobility  with  novel  rights  and  made  over  to  that  class, 
the  only  cultivated  one  at  the  time,  the  only  one  capable  of  exer- 
cising some  political  discretion,  an  important  part  in  the  adminis- 
tration of  justice.  Until  this  date  there  were  nobles  in  Russia, 
but  there  was  no  corporate  nobility.  Catherine  was  the  first  to 
organize  the  dvorihnstvo  into  provincial  corporations,  with  a  view 
to  fiirthering  administrative  self-government.  That  was  not  a 
solitary  innovation.  What  she  did  for  the  nobility,  she  did  at 
intervals  for  other  classes  also,  notably  for  the  cities  and  the 
town-classes.  She  aimed  at  uniting  the  various  parts  of  the 
nation  into  compact  groups,  organized  bodies,  having  common 

*  In  the  meantime,  a  thing  that  always  strikes  one  in  Russia  is  the  great 
number  of  persons  bearing  the  same  name  whom  one  encounters  in  all 
official  positions.  So  that  there  are  some  fifty — perhaps  hundred — families, 
forming  a  sort  of  bureaucratic  oligarchy,  whose  names  reappear  these  many 
years  on  almost  every  page  of  the  military,  diplomatic,  administrative 
annuaries.  This,  however,  is  a  natural  consequence  of  absolute  monarchy 
cmd  court  influences. 


NOBILITY  AND    TCHIN.  397 

interests  and  animated  with  one  spirit,  intending  to  call  on  them 
to  take  part  in  local  affairs,  each  in  its  sphere,  in  the  only  way 
in  which  a  nation's  participation  in  its  own  government  was 
understood  at  the  time — by  class,  order,  corporation. 

What  caused  the  failure  of  this  noble  attempt  ?  First  and  fore- 
most, the  incapacity  of  the  various  classes  to  make  use  of  the 
rights  conceded  to  them.  In  order  to  get  any  benefit  out  of  these 
corporative  privileges,  one  thing  was  absolutely  necessary :  the 
corporate  spirit  {esprit  de  corps)  y  and  in  that  all  classes  were  equally 
lacking.  The  scant  results  of  the  nobiliary  assemblies  is  accounted 
for  in  the  same  way  as  the  failure  of  merchant  guilds  and  corpora- 
tions of  laboring  men.  They  none  of  them  knew  how  to  form  a 
body,  with  an  instinct  of  cohesion  and  a  feeling  of  solidarity,  exer- 
cising co-ordinate  rights  in  view  of  common  aims,  and  pursuing 
through  generations  a  well  defined  political  or  social  object.  Nor 
did  the  nobility,  any  more  than  the  other  classes,  know  how  to 
form  a  living  organism,  animated  with  a  traditional  spirit  of  its 
own,  binding  together  its  own  members  and  at  the  same  time  dis- 
tinct from  that  of  the  other  classes.  Such  a  thing  might  be  found 
on  Russian  territory  in  the  Polish  nobility  of  the  western  prov- 
inces, or  the  German  nobility  of  the  Baltic  provinces — never  in 
Great-Russia,  in  the  native,  national  nobility — never,  at  any  time. 
The  spirit  of  caste,  of  class,  is  so  repugnant  to  the  Russian  nature, 
that  it  has  remained  closed  hitherto  against  even  the  most  ele- 
mentary esprit  de  corps. 

The  patent  or  charter  given  by  Catherine  II.  invested  the 
dvorihnstvo  with  considerable  rights  :  of  calling  together  periodi- 
cal assemblies ;  of  making  itself  heard  of  the  Crown  at  any 
time  by  means  of  petitions  ;  of  nominating  most  of  the  local  func- 
tionaries and  judges.  In  any  other  coimtry  such  prerogatives 
would  have  resulted  in  a  conflict  with  the  Crown  or  served  as 
starting-point  for  an  aristocratic  constitution.  In  Russia — nothing 
of  the  sort.  For  nigh  on  a  century  the  nobility  of  each  govern- 
ment has  gone  on  assembling,  electing  its  presidents  or  marshals, 


398       THE  EMPIRE  OF  THE    TSARS  AND    THE  RUSSIANS. 

designating  functionaries  and  magistrates,  doing  police  duty, 
without  giving  any  of  Catherine's  successors  the  slightest  cause  for 
uneasiness,  without  ever  encroaching  on  the  sovereign's  absolute 
power.  The  dvorihnstvo  had  neither  tendencies  of  its  own  nor 
traditional  views  to  put  in  practice ;  the  functionaries  appointed 
by  the  nobles  did  not,  in  the  exercise  of  their  duties,  act  as 
representatives  of  their  class.  All  these  isprhvniks  (chiefs  of 
police)  and  other  local  administrators  did  not  embody  the  spirit 
of  a  class,  nor  consider  themselves  in  any  way  responsible  to  their 
electors  ;  if  they  did  show  special  zeal  to  please  some,  it  was  only 
such  as  were  influential.  To  the  central  authority  they  were 
tools  as  devoted  and  docile  as  the  functionaries  directly  appointed 
by  it.  So  that  any  hopes  that  may  have  been  cherished  to  coun- 
teract through  this  institution  the  excessive  influence  of  the 
bureaucracy  were  deceived.  Russia  in  this  case  yielded  a  striking 
illustration  of  the  ine£&ciency  of  institutions  which  are  not  rooted 
in  a  country's  customs,  of  the  inanity  of  political  forms  and  pubUc 
liberties  unsupported  by  the  public  spirit. 

The  recent  creation  of  assemblies  in  which  all  the  classes  of 
the  nation  are  represented  naturally  robbed  the  special  assemblies 
of  the  nobility  of  nearly  all  their  prerogatives ;  but  in  these  new 
provincial  estates,  the  z^mstvo  of  district  or  government,  the 
nobility,  as  a  rule,  retains  a  decided  preponderance.  It  is,  as  we 
shall  see,  to  their  marshal  that  belongs  the  right  of  presiding  at 
these  gatherings  of  the  different  classes  ;  it  is  the  landholders,  the 
former  serf  holders,  who  by  number  and  position,  exert  over  them 
an  overbalancing  influence.  While  reducing  the  nobility's  direct 
privileges,  the  extension  of  public  liberties  has  in  reality  enlarged 
its  sphere  of  action.  No  one  disputes  its  claim  to  be  entitled  the 
controlling  class  ;  its  attributions  have  gone  on  multiplying  along 
with  the  institutions ;  a  place  has  been  reserved  to  it  in  all  the 
new  creations.  The  government  appeals  to  it  both  as  the 
cultivated  and  as  the  conservative  class.  Alexander  II.,  as  far 
back  as  1874,  solemnly  invited  it  to  constitute  itself  the  guardian 


NOBILITY  AND    TCHIN.  399 

of  popular  instruction.  Alexander  III.  has  done  more :  he 
restored  to  it,  in  1889,  a  direct  influence  over  the  rural  adminis- 
tration and  the  peasant  communes,  by  creating  '  *  rural  canton 
chiefs,"  invested  with  both  administrative  and  judicial  ftmctions, 
to  be  appointed  by  the  governor,  with  the  concurrence  of  the 
marshals,  out  of  the  noble  landowners  of  the  district.  Nihilism 
has  turned  out  profitable  to  the  dvorihnstvo.  In  the  war  waged 
against  the  conspirators,  Alexander  III.,  like  his  father,  has 
more  than  once  called  on  the  nobility  for  co-operation.  What 
will  come  of  it  all  ?  One  thing  is  certain  :  no  rights  conceded  to 
the  nobiUty  can  transform  the  time-honored  character  of  the  class. 
No  matter  what  they  are  and  how  broadened,  such  privileges  are 
not  going  to  turn  from  its  way  the  historical  march  of  Russian 
society.  In  this  respect  apprehension  and  hope  are  equally  vain 
and  illusory. 

An  examination  of  the  present  and  a  study  of  the  past  lead  to 
the  same  conclusion.  There  is  in  Russia  a  nobility  of  a  kind ; 
there  is  no  aristocracy,  and  it  is  not  at  this  time  of  day  that  one  can 
be  created.  There  is  a  nobility  as  ancient,  as  illustriSu^'Scf'aiiy  if 
considered  in  its  great  families,  and,  considered  as  a  whole,  as 
civilized,  as  enlightened  as  any  in  Europe,  the  most  open-minded 
of  all,  the  freest  from  prejudice,  the  most  exempt  of  arrogance  or 
caste-spirit,  and  at  the  same  time  the  most  mixed  and  motley,  the 
most  devoid  of  tradition,  of  common  life,  and  esprit  de  corps. 
This  dvorihnstvo,  lacking  in  homogeneousness  and  coherence,  is 
totally  wanting  in  the  qualities  as  well  as  the  defects  of  aristocra- 
cies. Is  it  for  good  ?  Is  it  for  evil  ?  That  matters  little  ;  it  is  a 
fact :  the  rest  has  merely  a  speculative  interest.  There  is  no  aris- 
tocracy in  Russia ;  there  are  individual  aristocrats.  There  are 
men  who  consider  a  hierarchical  basis  to  be  the  only  solid  founda- 
tion for  societies  to  rest  on.  You  hear  it  said  and  asserted,  in  a 
certain  sphere,  that  an  aristocracy  is  as  essential  to  the  social  body 
as  bones  are  to  the  human  body,  and  that  the  best  support  for  an 
hereditary  monarchy  is  an  hereditary  privileged  class.    In  all  this 


400      THE  EMPIRE  OF  THE    TSARS  AND    THE  RUSSIANS. 

there  may  be  some  truth.  But,  in  order  to  be  to  a  society  a  frame- 
work and  skeleton,  an  aristocracy  must  have  its  strength  in  itself, 
in  its  organism,  its  traditions.  How  can  a  state  or  a  throne  lean  on 
supports  which  draw  all  their  strength  from  favors  bestowed  by 
that  throne  and  the  laws  of  the  state  ? 

And  those  men  who,  in  Russia,  represent  the  nobility  as  the 
natural  support  of  the  monarchy,  fall  into  another  and  peculiar 
mistake :  they  misapprehend  the  nature  of  the  sovereign  power 
as  well  as  the  character  of  the  nobility  in  their  own  country.  Be- 
tween dvorihnstvo  and  tsarism  there  never  was  any  bond  but  that 
of  service, — never  any  intimacy,  afl&nities,  family  ties,  as  have  else- 
where existed  between  sovereign  and  nobility.  The  theory  or  fic- 
tion of  a  king,  first  among  peers,  first  gentleman  of  his  kingdom, 
is  absolutely  foreign  to  Russian  manners  and  tradition  both. 
The  Tsar  properly  belongs  to  no  order  in  the  state ;  he  is  neither 
noble  nor  burgher,  neither  urban  nor  rural.  Autocracy  always 
has  kept  outside  and  above  all  classes.  Therein  lie  some  of  the 
historical  motives  of  its  force  and  popularity  ;  it  never  could 
descend  from  this  height  without  being  untrue  to  its  traditional 
mission  and  weakening  itself. 

An  aristocracy  is  not  the  sort  of  building  to  be  constructed  at 
will,  on  a  marked  out  spot,  after  a  given  plan  ;  nature  herself 
must  have  disposed  the  location  and  cut  and  trimmed  the  materials. 
These  materials  the  Russian  aristocrats  are  compelled  to  seek 
amongst  the  great  landlords,  the  dvorihnstvo,  as  a  whole,  being 
manifestly  unavailable  for  such  a  construction.  Under  Alexander 
II.  and  now  under  Alexander  III.,  in  the  very  midst  of  all  the 
transformations  of  our  times,  the  political  builders  have  been  busy 
setting  up  all  sorts  of  plans  for  social  reconstruction.  Some  of 
these  plans  and  devices  are  very  ingenious  and  do  very  well  on 
paper  ;  we  shall  come  across  several  as  we  study  local  institutions 
and  administration.  Unfortimately  the  social  status  is  indepen- 
dent of  library  combinations,  however  skilful, — of  governments, 
however  great  their  authority.     Political  calculations  and  reason 


NOBILITY  AND   TCHIN.  4OI 

itself  have  little  hold  on  it ;  it  is  altogether  at  the  mercy  of  the 
national  genius  and  the  spirit  of  the  age. 

Now  in  Russia,  manners,  traditions,  popular  instinct,  combine 
in  loudly  opposing  the  restoration  of  an  hereditary  privileged  class. 
The  entire  Russian  literature  bears  witness  thereto,  although  it  is 
almost  wholly  the  work  of  nobles,  written  by  and  for  nobles.  The 
antiquity  of  race  is  a  very  feeble  claim  on  the  respect  of  the  posi- 
tive-minded realistic  Russian.  All  class  distinctions  notwith- 
standing, he  has  remained  free  from  caste-spirit,  and  has  not  the 
inborn  awe  of  birth  with  which  the  German  and  Englishman  are 
imbued. ' 

The  promoters  of  hierarchical  ideas  in  Russia  fall  in  reality 
into  the  same  blunder  as  the  promoters  of  radical  ideas.  Aristo- 
crats and  demagogues  merely,  though  unconsciously,  ape  the 
West.  Both  insist  on  applying  to  national  problems  borrowed  solu- 
tions ;  both  undertake  to  trick  out  their  own  country  after  foreign 
fashions.  The  great  difference  between  them  lies  in  this  :  that 
the  aristocratical  conservatives  have  chosen  the  model  which  is 
least  adaptable  to  the  national  ways  and  clashes  most  with  the 
new  tendencies.  If  it  is  easy  to  discover,  in  such  or  such  old 
institutions  of  England  or  Prussia,  such  or  such  conservative 
guaranties,  it  is  not  so  easy  to  take  from  foreign  countries,  to  en- 
dow one's  own  with,  what  nature  or  history  have  withheld  from  it. 
It  is  with  social  forms  as  with  the  soil,  as  with  a  country's  natu- 
ral structure.  While  racing  across  his  flat  steppes  of  the  south 
or  jogging  through  his  peaty  woods  of  the  north,  a  Russian  may 
think  how  much  variety  high  hills  would  add  to  the  scenery  and 
to  agriculture,  what  capital  bulwarks  against  the  winds,  what  ex- 
cellent reservoirs  of  moisture  a  few  chains  of  snow-capped  moun- 
tains would  make, — but  it  will  not  enter  into  his  head  to  go  and 
raise  hills  and  construct  mountain  chains.  Yet  such  is  the  pre- 
tension of  men  who,  in  a  society  denuded  of  privileges  and  rolled 
level  by  centuries,  flatter  themselves  with  the  idea  that  they  can 
'  See  the  Appendix  to  the  preceding  chapter. 

•6 


402      THE  EMPIRE  OF  THE    TSARS  AND   THE  RUSSIANS. 

construct  steep  summits  and  dig  impassable  ravines  and  chasms, 
i.  e.,  revive  a  privileged  class  and  put  prerogatives  on  their  feet 
again. 

Between  Russia  and  France  there  is  greater  similarity  in  this 
respect  than  would  seem  :  in  both,  it  is  outside  of  class  privileges 
and  artificial  combinations,  it  is  down  in  the  depths  of  the  nation's 
consciousness,  that  a  conservative  basis  must  be  sought  for.  Only 
in  Russia,  where  equality  as  yet  is  not  so  much  in  the  customs  and 
culture  as  in  the  national  instinct  and  the  logic  of  facts,  where  the 
old-time  framework  of  society  is  still  outwardly  kept  up,  the  delu- 
sion of  aristocratic  day-dreams  is  at  once  more  excusable  and  not 
as  harmless. 


BOOK  VII. 
THE  PEASANT  AND  THE  EMANCIPATION. 


CHAPTER  I. 

Russian  I/iterature  and  the  Apotheosis  of  the  Mujik — Various  Classes  of 
Peasants — Origin  and  Causes  of  Serfdom — Labor  Dues  and  the  Obrdk — 
Situation  of  the  Peasants  before  Emancipation — Napoleon  III.,  I<ib- 
erator  of  the  Serfs. 

On  one  of  the  Paris  stages  a  French  piece  has  been  played  of 
late — a  play  of  Russian  manners  and  Russian  authorship — original 
and  incomplete,  a  play  which  was  favorably  received  by  the  French 
public,  although  it  is  not  likely  to  have  been  really  comprehended  : 
I  mean  The  Danishefs.^  This  comedy,  or,  more  truly,  drama, 
which  depicts  Russian  society  prior  to  the  emancipation,  has  a 
peasant  for  hero,  and  its  subject  may  be  said  to  be  the  moral  pre- 
eminence of  the  mujik.  The  nobility,  conceited  and  frivolous, — 
the  clergy,  dependent  and  cringing, — the  merchant,  newly  enriched 
and  servile, — cut  a  poor  figure  by  the  side  of  the  man  of  the 
people,  the  quondam  serf  Ossip.  "  This  man  is  great,  this  man 
is  worth  more  than  we  are,  mother,"  the  young  Count  Danishef 
says  of  him.  These  words  give  the  keynote  to  the  piece.  The  con- 
clusion to  which  we  are  led,  perhaps  unconsciously,  by  this  rustic 
drama,  is  the  apotheosis  of  the  man  of  the  people  to  the  detriment 
of  the  classes  privileged  by  birth,  knowledge,  or  fortune.     From 

*  This  play,  whose  author  signs  himself  "  Nevsky,"  was  rehandled  for 
the  stage,  as  everybody  knows,  by  Alexandre  Dumas. 

403 


404      THE  EMPIRE   OF   THE    TSARS  AND   THE  RUSSIANS. 

this  point  of  view,  the  comedy  played  at  the  Od6on,  though  writ- 
ten for  the  French  and  in  their  language,  belongs  by  rights  to 
contemporary  Russian  literature.  To  use  the  word  of  a  humorist, 
Russian  literature  just  now  "  reeks  of  the  peasant "  ;  the  mujik  is 
its  hero,  and  has  been  for  the  last  thirty  years.  At  first  sight,  this 
strikes  us  as  a  singular  anomaly  ;  on  closer  inspection,  the  thing 
explains  itself. 

In  a  state  almost  entirely  rural,  such  as  Russia  still  is,  the 
peasant  forms  the  most  important  as  well  as  the  most  numerous 
class  of  the  nation.     There,  more  than  elsewhere,  the  workers  of 
the  soil  embody  the  country's  fund  of  nationalism.  When  brought 
.  fece  to  face  with  the  comparative  insignificance  of  the  towns  and 
urban  population,  the  peasantry  still  is  the  nation — or  appears  to 
/"Be  by  comparison.      Yet  the  being  who  fills  so  large  a  place  has 
\    long  been  scorned  and  uncomprehended  by  a  higher  class  trained 
to  foreign  manners  and  ways  of  thinking.     The  reaction  of  the 
national  spirit  against  the  superficial  cosmopolitism  of  the  last 
century,  the  rehabilitation  of  nationality  in  art,  literature,  politics, 
were  bound  to  benefit,  in  the  first  place,  the  peasant,  as  being  the 
Russian  man^ar  excellence.     This  people  of  the  fields  and  woods, 
/     a  people  of  serfs,  so  long  a  target  for  all  that  weened  themselves 
\    above  it  to  spurn  and  hit  at,  all  at  once  found  itself  studied  in  its 
\  ways  and  customs,  its  songs  and  beliefs.     Finding  in  the  higher 
Vclasses  only  colorless  reflections  or  commonplace  copies  of  foreign 
tilings,  the  Russians  suddenly  felt  very  happy  on  discovering,  in 
their  own  niral  people,  originality,  character,  individuality.     De- 
lighted at  having  at  last  found  her  own  self  again  under  all  her 
borrowed  finery,  Russia  took  to  admiring  herself  in  the  most  rug- 
ged of  her  children,  her  most  legitimate  representative — the  peas- 
,  "aint.     For  a  large  proportion  of  a  hyper-refined  society,  the  serf, 
but  just  set  free,  the  ignorant  villager,  imwashed,  coarse,  became 
an  object  of  infatuation  and  enthusiasm,  of  respect  and  veneration. 
The  mujik — the  Russian  Man, — but  lately  considered  undeserving 
of  a  glance,  saw  himself  hoisted  on  to  an  altar,  and  the  homage 


THE  PEASANT  AND    THE  EMANCIPATION.  405 

rendered  by  his  devotees  of  to-day — ^his  contemners  of  yesterday 
— ^has  not  always  been  free  from  superstition  and  fetishism. 
Fashion  naturally  could  not  remain  a  stranger  to  the  success  of 
this  new  worship,  which,  amidst  its  devotees,  numbers  some 
hypocrites.  In  this,  as  a  rule,  realistic  country,  men  habitually 
unbelieving  and  sceptical  turned  up  amidst  the  most  zealous 
sectators,  the  most  intolerant  priests  of  the  new  dispensation. 
True,  this  religion,  like  so  many  others,  often  remains  a  thing 
of  the  brain  and  the  imagination,  and  the  idol  might  not  unfre- 
quently  complain  of  the  irreverence  with  which  its  most  fervent 
worshippers,  in  theory,  treat  it  in  practice. 

This  apotheosis  of  the  mujik — the  boor,  the  clodhopper — can 
be  accoimted  for  by  reasons  proper  to  Russia,  and  others,  taken ^.^ 
from  the  social  status  of  Europe.  As  people  did  in  France  before  i 
the  Revolution,  a  number  of  Russians  profess  the  doctrine  that  it  | 
is  by  returning  to  the  people's  simple  life,  by  quaffing  invigorat- 
ing draughts  at  the  fount  of  uprightness  and  all  popular  virtues, 
that  the  higher  classes  of  society  will  recover  moral  vigor  and 
health,  will  become  purified  of  the  corruption  with  which  contact 
with  the  West  has  infected  them.*  The  mystical  panegyrists  of 
the  mujik  do  not  perceive  that  they  are  unconsciously  renewing, 
for  their  country's  benefit,  one  of  the  old,  old  themes  of  the  French 
eighteenth  century,  returning  to  the  doctrines  of  Rousseau  and  the 
guileless  belief  in  the  perfections  of  ' '  the  natural  man. ' '  In  Rus- 
sia such  tendencies  come  from  a  secret  discouragement,  an  invol- 
untary humility  of  the  cultured  classes,  and  a  great  national  pride, 
a  blind  faith  in  the  native  energies  and  the  people's  future.  Men 
who  have  grown  sick  and  tired  of  aping  the  foreigners,  and  who 
feel  that  they  have  incapacitated  themselves,  for  a  long  time  to 

*  Thus  the  great  novelists,  Tolstoy  and  Dostoyefsky.  The  latter  queries, 
in  A  Writer's  Diary  (February,  1876)  :  "Which  is  better,  the  people  or 
we  ?  Is  it  desirable  that  the  people  should  take  examples  from  us,  or  we 
from  the  people  ?  I  must  answer  in  all  sincerity  :  it  is  for  us  to  bow  down 
before  the  people,  to  take  from  it  both  idea  and  form,  to  acknowledge  and 
adore  its  genuineness." 


406      THE  EMPIRE   OF   THE    TSARS  AND    THE  RUSSIANS. 

come,  from  doing  anything  but  assimilating  what  others  have  done, 
— men  perforce  resigned  to  their  own  impotence  and  all  the  more 
ambitious  for  their  country,  have  come,  through  lassitude  and 
irritation  at  their  own  inability  to  accomplish  more,  to  glorify  that 
element  which  has  remained  free  from  all  outside  contact,  whose 
powers  are  as  yet  untried,  which  is  new,  intact,  unpolluted, — in 
one  word,  the  popular  force.  Hence  this  adoration  of  the  uncul- 
tivated by  the  cultivated  man,  these  kneelings  and  salutations  of 
lettered  and  informed  men  before  the  armid.k  and  the  tuliip — the 
peasant's  sheepskin. 

"  We  civilized  men,  we  are  nothing  but  old  rags  ;  but  the  peo- 
ple— oh,  the  people  is  great !  "  exclaims  one  of  Turgu^nief's  person- 
ages, in  Smoke.  Struck  with  the  comparative  sterility  of  the 
controlling  classes,  these  disillusioned  sons  of  Western  civilization 
turn  their  backs  on  it  and  their  faces  to  the  mujik.  With  glad 
admiration  they  contemplate  this  Russian  people,  still  dumb  and 
uncouth  in  its  swaddling-clothes, — this  people  which  covers  the 
widest  habitable  region  of  the  world,  which,  in  numbers,  is  already 
now  ahead  of  every  other  Christian  nation  on  the  globe.  With 
this  compact  mass  of  over  fifty  or  sixty  million  peasants  before 
them,  the  patriots  take  to  dreaming  of  the  future  as  a  mother  or 
nurse  beside  a  cradle.  For  this  people  still  in  its  infancy,  still 
crude  and  unlettered,  they  dream  of  an  intellectual  greatness,  a 
moral  place  in  the  world  proportionate  to  its  bulk  and  the  immen- 
sity of  its  empire.*  This  people  of  peasants  is  like  a  gigantic  ^^'g 
as  yet  unopened.  One  does  not  know  what  will  come  out  of  it,  but 
one  naturally  expects  something  huge,  because,  in  spite  of  the  fable, 
it  seems  as  though  the  mountain  ought  to  give  birth  to  something 
more  than  the  ' '  ridiculous  mouse. ' '  One  understands  the  instinc- 
tive respect,  the  semi-religplous  reverence  of  the  Russian  before  this 

*  "  You  have  only  to  look  on  a  world's  map  to  be  filled  with  awe  before 
Russia's  future  destinies,"  wrote  Nadi^jdin  as  early  as  1831.  "Can  such  a 
colossus  have  been  upreared  for  no  purpose  by  the  wisdom  of  the  Creator?  " 
(Fragment  from  the  Telescope,  quoted  by  P^pin  in  his  Studies  of  the  Rus- 
sian Nationality. — European  Messenger  ( Viistnik  Evrdpy),  June,  1882, 


THE  PEASANT  AND    THE  EMANCIPATION.  407 

incubation,  proceeding  in  mystery  and  gloom,  and  on  which  hang 
all  the  destinies  of  his  native  land. 

The  Russians  are  fain  to  look  to  the  mujik  for  a  new  departure, 
a  political  or  social  revelation,  a  renovation  of  Europe  and  man- 
kind. The  seers  and  prophets,  who  announce  his  greatness,  can 
prophesy  the  more  freely  what  this  popular  sphinx  will  say,  will 
do,  that  he  has  not  yet  opened  his  mouth  and  is  not  yet  awake. 
Certainly,  such  soaring  hopes  cannot  prove  free  from  illusion. 
Not  the  less,  however,  we  have  there  a  mystery,  an  occult  riddle, 
which  interests  civilization  very  highly,  and  if  patriotism,  by  dint 
of  meditating  over  it,  somewhat  overleaps  sober  reason,  it  is  to  be 
excused. 

Thus,  for  one  portion  of  the  lettered  classes,  the  man  of  the 
people  is  an  unconscious  deity,  similar  to  those  infant  gods,  the 
embryonic  gods  of  Egypt,  whose  divine  force  is  all  in  posse  still, 
whose  latent  energies  are  adored  before  they  have  had  a  chance 
of  manifesting  themselves.  For  another  school,  the  man  of  the 
people,  the  peasant,  is  merely  a  sort  of  raw  material,  of  human 
first  matter,  a  potter's  clay  having  no  form  but  that  given  to  it  by 
the  higher  classes.*  It  is  needless  to  demonstrate  what  those  two 
points  of  view  have  in  common,  and  wherein  both  overreach  the 
mark.  If  literature  in  Russia  has  got  very  near  to  the  people,  it 
too  often  approached  it  with  preconceived  views,  seeking  in  it 
only  what  it  was  determined  to  find.  Some  fancied  that  they 
could  discover  in  the  hidden  depths  of  the  popular  mind  latent 
forces  which  they  opposed  to  the  barrenness  of  the  vaunted  culture 
of  the  higher  classes ;  others,  more  scornful  or  more  superficial, 
could  see  in  the  people's  soul  nothing  but  darkness  and  barbar- 

*  This  was  the  view  of  one  of  the  most  distinguished  defenders  of  aris- 
tocratic tendencies,  General  Fadi^yef.  In  opposition  to  the  higher  classes, 
the  nobility,  which  he  habitually  refers  to  as  "the  cultivated  layer,"  he 
usually  designates  the  people  under  the  names  of  "  elementary  force," 
"plastic  matter,"  "protoplasm,"  And  this  elementary  force  he  considers 
as  being  one  and  the  same  in  all  countries,  and  everywhere  devoid  of  any 
spirit  of  its  own,  everywhere  incapable  of  spontaneous  development. 


408      THE  EMPIRE  OF   THE    TSARS  AND   THE  RUSSIANS. 

ism,  emptiness  and  nothingness.  In  practical  life  views  concern- 
ing the  peasant  clash  quite  as  much  and  we  encounter  the  same 
diflferences  as  in  the  literary  world.  ' '  Why  in  the  world  should  you 
be  interested  in  our  mujik  f  "  I  was  asked  by  a  lady  on  the  Lower 
Volga.  "  He  is  a  brute  of  whom  you  never  will  make  a  man." 
And  the  same  day,  on  the  same  steamer,  a  gentleman-landholder 
was  saying  to  me  with  a  conviction  just  as  firm  :  "  The  most  in- 
telligent peasant  in  Europe  is,  to  my  mind,  the  contadino  of 
Northern  Italy  ;  but  our  mujik  could  give  him  points. ' '  Thus 
extolled  by  some,  contemned  by  others,  the  Russian  peasant's 
place  really  should  be  where  Pascal  would  have  placed  man  in 
general  :  neither  so  high  up,  nor  so  low  down. 

The  mujik' s  intelligence  is  not  a  matter  of  doubt,  and  his  pane- 
gyrists are  perhaps  nearer  the  truth  than  his  detractors  ;  but  this 
intelligence  has  been  hampered  and  heavily  handicapped  by  the 
course  of  events.  There  is  in  the  Russian  legends  a  giant  of 
prodigious  strength,  a  sort  of  rustic  Hercules  or  Samson,  Iliy^  of 
Mtirom  by  name,  often  regarded  as  an  impersonation  of  the  people, 
the  peasant.*  This  popular  colossus  could  not,  for  a  long  while, 
show  his  power  and  genius.  Iliy^  was  in  bondage.  For  years 
he  was  attached  to  the  glebe  and  could  neither  walk  nor  other- 
wise act  freely.  Now  that  the  emancipation  has  knocked  off  his 
fetters,  the  giant  can  move  once  more ;  but,  after  being  so  long 
weighed  down  with  chains,  he  has  not  yet  recovered  the  free  use 
of  his  limbs,  and  has  lost  the  consciousness  of  his  strength.  It  is 
only  after  years  of  freedom,  possibly  after  several  generations,  that 
this  so  lately  enslaved  people  will  learn  to  know  itself  and  will 
show  what  the  futiu-e  has  to  expect  from  it.  The  peasant,  with 
back  still  bent  under  the  servitude  of  years,  could  not  straighten 
himself  all  at  once  ;  through  the  freeman  of  to-day  the  serf  of 
yesterday  still  shows. 

The  emancipation  has  been  for  Russia  an  event  of  capital  im- 

*  See  The  Songs  of  the  Russian  People,  by  Mr.  Ralston,  and  Alfired 
Rambaud's  La  Russie  j^pique. 


THE  PEASANT  AND    THE  EMANCIPATION.  409 

port,  an  event  unmatched  by  anything  in  the  history  of  nations  ; 
for  in  all,  serfdom  has  died  out  gradually.  The  emancipation  has 
been  the  starting-point  of  numerous  changes  and  reforms  in  the 
entire  domain  of  the  nation's  life  ;  but  this  great  revolution  could 
not,  in  a  few  years,  yield  all  its  fruits.  It  was  the  less  to  be  ex- 
pected that,  in  reality,  this  vast  operation  is  not  altogether  com- 
pleted even  yet ;  it  is  being  carried  on  still,  and  will  not  come  to 
an  end  before  the  first  years  of  the  twentieth  century.  Until  then 
a  study  of  the  free  peasant  is  inseparably  linked  to  that  of  serfdom 
and  the  conditions  of  his  enfranchisement. 

The  emancipation,  the  work  of  Alexander  II.,  has  benefited' 

only  about  one  half  of  the  peasants  of  the  empire.     The  others, 

known  as  "  Crown  peasants,"  and  settled  on  the  demesnes  of  the 

State,  were  considered  as  free,  although  they,  too,  were  attached 

to  the  soil  and  were  virtually  serfs  of  the  emperor  or  the  State. 

The  great  bulk  of  the  peasants  was  thus  divided  into  two  classes, 

nearly  equal  in  number,  and  which,  even  after  the  emancipation, 

have  remained  separate  and  distinct.     On  one  side,  the  free  or_ 

"  Crown  "  peasants  ;  on  the  other,  private  peasants  or  serfs,  firee- 

men  now.     Between  these  two  categories  there  was  a  third,  to  a 

certain  extent  intermediary  one  :  the  peasants  of  the  appanages, 

or  estates  reserved  for  the  endowment  of  the  members  of  the 

imperial  family.* 

*  The  following  were,  prior  to  the  emancipation,  the  relative  propor- 
tions between  these  three  categories  of  peasants,  in  European  Russia,  not 
including  the  Caucasus,  Poland,  and  Finland.  The  entire  number  of  serfs 
of  both  sexes  was  22,500,000;  that  of  the  "Crown  peasants"  something 
over  22,000,000,  comprising  certain  odd  groups  of  free  peasants,  such  as  col- 
onists of  foreign  extraction  ;  the  appanage  peasants  amounted  to  about 
2,000,000.  A  few  years  earlier  the  proportion  was  more  unfavorable.  In 
1838  the  serfs  numbered  44  to  every  100  of  the  population.  The  relative 
number  of  the  serfs  was  evidently  slowly  decreasing,  owing  to  individual 
manumissions, — to  military  service  which  set  the  soldiers  free, — to  the 
mortgaging  of  estates  to  the  State,  which  foreclosed  on  them  after  the  inter- 
est had  remained  unpaid  a  certain  time,  adding  them  to  the  Crown  demesnes. 
In  this  way  serfdom,  left  to  itself,  would  have  become  extinct  at  the  end 
of  a  few  centuries,  without  the  formality  of  emancipation. 


410      THE  EMPIRE  OF  THE   TSARS  AND   THE  RUSSIANS. 

These  peasants,  long  distributed  into  groups,  originally  enjoyed 
the  same  liberty  and  the  same  rights.  In  Russia  more  than  in 
any  countrj'  of  the  West,  freedom  has  ever  been  the  normal  con- 
dition of  rural  man.  The  bondage  of  the  glebe  came  very  late  ; 
but  it  gradually  became  heavier  and  heavier,  until  it  degenerated 
into  a  sort  of  slavery.  Only  at  the  end  of  the  sixteenth  century, 
at  the  moment  when  the  bonds  of  serfdom  fell  off  or  were  much 
loosened  in  the  greater  part  of  Europe,  were  they  made  fast 
in  Russia. 

In  old-time  Russia  there  were  bondsmen  {kholbpy,  raty). 
They  usually  were  prisoners  of  war,  insolvent  debtors,  or  men 
who  had  sold  themselves  to  escape  penury.  The  number  of  such 
bondsmen  was  small,  and  the  bulk  of  the  peasants  were  considered 
as  freemen.  Yet  the  men  of  the  country  found  themselves  at  an 
early  period  in  an  inferior  and  despised  condition  as  regards  the 
men  of  war  and  the  drujfna.  They  were  called  "  little  men  " — 
mujikl — or  else  "half-men,"  in  opposition  to  the  warriors,  the 
drujinniki,  who  rejoiced  in  the  appellations  of  "men" — milji — 
and  "full  men,"  i.  <?.,  complete  men.  Such  is  the  original  mean- 
ing of  the  diminutive  ending  of  the  word  mujik ;  it  corresponds 
to  the  I^atin  homunculus.^  In  Moscovia  this  name  was  g^ven  to 
rurals  and  urbans  indifferently,  to  tradesmen  and  villagers. 

I/ong    before  the  establishment  of  serfdom  the  mujiks'   or 

"little-men's  "  main  task  was  to  provide  the  "  men's" — mUji — 

livelihood,  to  cultivate  for  them  the  lands  which  the  sovereign 

granted  his  servants  as  salary  or  for  their  maintenance.     The 

mujiks — also  called  "black  \i.  e.,  dirty]  men,"  tcKbmyii  liMi — 

were  not,  however,  attached  either  to  the  master  they  served,  or 

to  the  soil  they  cultivated.     Just  as  the  boyhrs  and  the  members 

of  the  drujina  could  pass  at  will  from  one  kniaz  to  another,  so 

the  peasants  could  change  masters,  by  passing  from  one  land  to 

*  This  distinction  answers  that  between  the  leudi  and  the  manni, — leuU 
and  manner — in  old-time  Germany.  The  oflBcial  name  of  the  Russian 
peasants  as  a  class  is  krestiyhne,  singular  kresiiydnin — Christian — a  name 
evidently  dating  from  the  days  of  the  Tatar  domination. 


THE  PEASANT  AND    THE  EMANCIPATION.  4II 

another.  They  also,  like  the  boyhrs  and  drujhiniki,  enjoyed  the 
right  of  free  service  as  well  as  of  free  passage,  and  likewise  lost 
the  first  of  these  rights  when  they  were  deprived  of  the  second, 
which  was  its  guaranty. 

Under  the  last  of  the  Rurikovitchs,  the  peasants  usually  exer- 
cised this  right  of  theirs  once  a  year,  at  the  close  of  the  agricul- 
tural year,  nominally  on  the  26th  of  November,  the  feast  of  St. 
George,  practically  all  through  the  week  preceding  and  that 
following  that  feast.  Prior  to  the  establishment  of  serfdom  when 
the  demand  for  working  hands  was  already  great,  the  pomUsh- 
tchik  or  landlord  who  wished  to  retain  his  peasants  had  recourse, 
it  is  said,  to  their  innate  love  of  liquor,  and  kept  them  in  a 
drunken  state  all  through  the  fateful  fortnight.  There  came  a 
time  when  the  peasant,  in  the  interest  less  of  the  landlords  than 
of  the  state,  was  deprived  of  this  right  of  taking  short  leave  of 
his  master,  but  he  never  lost  the  memory  of  the  privilege  that 
was  taken  from  him.  Even  now,  after  three  centuries  of  bondage, 
the  mujik  has  not  forgotten  the  feast  day  which  once  on  a  time 
restored  him  to  freedom  ;  the  feast  of  St.  George  is  incorporated 
in  many  proverbial  expressions  of  disappointment. 

In  order  to  attach  the  peasant  to  the  glebe,  all  that  was  needed 
was  to  forbid  his  changing  land  at  St.  George's.  This  prohibition, 
temporary  at  first,  then  renewed  and  confirmed  by  successive  sov- 
ereigns, at  last  became  a  fundamental  law  of  the  state.  Thus  the 
chief  institution  of  the  Russia  of  these  latter  centuries  was  evolved 
out  of  a  simple  police  measure.  The  most  important  fact  of  the 
people's  history  passed  wellnigh  unperceived  in  the  national  annals". 
Serfdom  was  established,  as  everywhere  else  it  vanished,  almost 
insensibly,  without  a  shock  to  the  minds  of  the  contemporaries. 

It  was  the  end  of  the  sixteenth  century,  and  the  great  wars 
against  the  Lithuanians  and  the  Teutonic  Order  were  at  their 
height.  The  servants  of  the  state,  supplied  with  lands  by  their 
sovereign,  complained  that  their  means  of  support  were  inadequate, 
lyabor  was  scarce  and  costly  in  this  country  where  land  abotmded 


412      THE  EMPIRE  OF  THE   TSARS  AND   THE  RUSSIANS. 

while  the  population  was  scant  and  sparse.  The  landowners — 
pomiish-tchiks — wrangled  for  men.  The  lesser  accused  the  greater 
of  enticing  and  retaining  all  the  laborers.  Such  a  state  of  a£fairs 
imperilled  Moscovia's  military  forces,  at  the  most  critical  moment 
of  her  history.  The  financial  system  of  the  state,  no  less  primitive 
at  the  time,  saw  itself  threatened  equally  with  the  military  system 
by  the  frequent  Sittings  of  the  taxpayers  and  laborers,  and  the 
liking  for  a  vagabond  life  which  resulted  therefrom.  It  was  the 
age  when  the  Moscovite  Empire,  recently  enlarged  at  the  expense 
of  the  Tatars,  held  out  to  the  tillers  of  the  thankless  northern  re- 
gions the  allurement  of  the  more  fertile  southern  lands, — the  age 
when,  to  escape  from  taxes  and  share  the  free  life  of  the  Cosacks, 
adventurous  men  fled  to  the  Volga  and  the  Don,  to  the  Kama  and 
Siberia.  In  stealing  his  own  person  from  the  landlords,  a  man 
also  robbed  the  exchequer  of  its  dues.  In  order  to  insure  to  the 
country  regular  financial  and  military  resources,  the  simplest  thing 
to  do  was  to  make  man  a  fixture,  to  bind  the  peasant  to  the  field 
he  tilled,  the  burgher  to  the  town  or  city  where  he  dwelt.  And 
this  is  what  Boris  Godun6f  did,  and  after  him  the  tsars  of  the 
seventeenth  century.  From  that  time  down  to  Alexander  II.,  a 
fixture  the  mujik  remained,  tied  down,  "  made  fast "  to  the  soil, 
for  such  is  the  meaning  of  the  Russian  word,  kriipostnby,  which 
all  European  languages  translate  by  serf.  Russian  serfdom  had 
just  this  origin  and  no  other  :  it  was  evolved  out  of  the  prevalent 
administrative  system  and  the  economic,  indeed  the  physical,  con- 
ditions of  Moscovia,  considerably  aggrandized  as  the  country  was 
by  the  last  rulers  of  the  house  of  Rurik,  and  threatened  with  the 
dispersion  of  its  thinly  scattered  population,  which  tended  to  ooze 
away  into  the  steppes,  as  a  thread  of  water  into  the  sands  of  the 
desert. 

<  In  this  Europe  of  the  East,  this  land  of  log-cabins,  almost  as 
feasy  to  transport  or  reconstruct  as  the  tent  of  the  Arab,  man  felt 
little  attachment  to  the  soil,  little  liking  for  ag^culture.  Three 
centuries  of  bondage  have  been  unable  wholly  to  eradicate  in  the 


THE  PEASANT  AND    THE  EMANCIPATION.  413 

mujik  his  hankering  after  a  wandering  life, — a  propensity  en- 
couraged by  the  long  rivers  and  endless  plains.  Serfdom,  which 
bound  man  to  the  soil,  may  be  regarded  as  a  reaction  of  the  state 
against  these  adventurous  instincts,  which  drew  to  the  uttermost 
ends  of  the  empire,  on  the  track  of  the  Cosacks,  the  most  vigorous, 
the  most  enterprising  portion  of  the  Russian  people.  The  less 
Russia  was  bounded  by  nature,  the  vaster  her  horizon,  the  more 
necessary  it  became  to  impose  restrictions  on  her  sons :  serfdom 
kept  them  in  place,  doomed  them  to  immobility. 

It  was  in  1593,  under  Theodor,  a  son  of  Ivan  the  Terrible,  and 
by  the  influence  of  Godun6f,  his  brother-in-law  and  eventually  his 
successor,  that  the  right  of  free  passage  from  one  estate  to  another 
was  taken  from  the  peasant.  Out  of  this  one,  originally  temporary, 
feet  resulted  his  bondage.  Something  analogous  had  occurred 
twelve  centuries  before,  in  the  Roman  Empire,  at  the  time  of  the 
institution  of  the  colonate  \iiX\^&[  Christian  emperors.*  Once  "  made 
fast ' '  to  the  soil,  the  Moscovite  peasant  gradually  lost  all  his  civil 
rights  and  fell  into  a  state  of  dependency  which  the  lawgiver  had 
not  foreseen.  He  became  the  landlord's  property,  his  chattel. 
Godun6f  s  work  was  confirmed  and  completed  by  ukhzes  of  the 
first  Romdnofs.  Peter  the  Great's  reforms  tightened  the  peasant's 
fetters  instead  of  loosening  them  ;  his  bondage  became  more  irk- 
some as  it  was  better  regulated.  The  first  general  census  ("re- 
vision "),  taken  in  1722  and  renewed  since  at  uneven  intervals, 
provided  serfdom  with  regular  registers.  With  a  view  to  a  simpli- 
fication of  the  administrative  machinery,  and  also  out  of  economy, 
the  State  gave  up  to  the  landlords  nearly  the  whole  of  the  local 
administration  as  well  as  the  police  duties  within  their  domains. 
Serfdom  now  became  the  more  difl&cult  to  abolish  that  it  had  been 
transformed  into  a  tool  of  the  government's,  one  of  the  chief 
wheels  in  a  political  machinery  as  yet  not  very  intricate. 

*  The  colonist  coiild  not  sell  the  land  that  had  been  allotted  to  him  before 
a  certain,  considerable  number  of  years,  twenty  or  more.  This,  of  course, 
amounted  to  compulsory  residence,  as  only  the  poor  applied  for  and  re- 
ceived state  lands  and  naturally  they  had  to  cultivate  them  themselves. 


4^4      THE  EMPIRE   OF   THE   TSARS  AND    THE  RUSSIANS. 

Until  as  late  as  1861  the  \a.w^ot^—poiniish-tchik — might  be 
considered  as  an  agent  of  the  State,  commissioned  to  see  to  the  en- 
listment of  soldiers  in  rural  districts  and  to  the  collection  of  taxes, 
in  short  as  a  sort  of  hereditary  functionary,  invested  with  adminis- 
trative powers  and  the  guardianship  of  the  peasants  on  his  lands. 
V._..  Serfdom  did  not  spread  over  Russia  evenly.  Into  the  remoter 
and  almost  desert  parts,  where  the  landlords  were  few,  into  the 
region  of  the  great  lakes  and  of  the  White  Sea,  as  well  as  into  the 
portion  of  Siberia  conquered  by  the  Cosacks,  the  new  ordinances 
had  not  made  their  way  or  had  not  been  enforced.  These  regions, 
treated  so  harshly  by  nature,  have  always  almost  entirely  ignored 
both  serfdom  and  nobility ;  primitive  liberty  and  equality  kept 
their  ground  there  down  to  our  own  days.  In  the  south  the 
Cosacks  also  would  not  hear  of  the  new  institution,  which  swelled 
their  ranks  with  runaways.  Ukraina — the  portion  of  Little- 
Russia  situated  on  the  left  bank  of  the  Dniepr — remained  exempt 
from  the  bondage  of  the  soil  until  the  reign  of  Catherine  II.  When 
the  hour  of  freedom  struck,  the  historical  centre  of  Russia  was  also 
that  of  serfdom,  which,  from  the  lands  around  Moscow,  radiated 
to  the  north  and  to  the  south,  towards  Europe  and  towards  Asia. 
In  the  west  Moscovite  serfdom  encountered — in  Lithuania  and 
White-Russia — Polish  serfdom,  to  which  the  entire  rural  popula- 
tion, whether  Russian  or  Lithuanian,  had  long  been  subject.  By 
a  singular  anomaly,  it  was  the  predominant  race — the  Slavic  race, 
and  especially  the  Russian — which,  in  the  Russian  Empire,  was 
most  generally  bowed  under  the  yoke  of  serfdom.  The  Tatars  in 
the  east,  the  Rumanians  in  Bessarabia,  the  German  colonists,  even 
the  Finn  tribes,  had,  as  a  rule,  maintained  their  liberty. 

The  condition  of  the  peasants  settled  on  lands  belonging  to 

private  owners  varied  greatly  according  to  localities,  customs,  and 

masters.     To  adequately  describe  all  forms  of  serfdom,  it  would  be 

necessary  to  classify  the  serfs  into  some  twenty  different  groups.* 

*  The  reader  might  profitably  consult  M.  X.  Marmier's  Voyages,  or  Mr. 
de  Molinari's  Lettres  sur  la  Russie,  and,  for  greater  detail,  see  the  works 
of  Haxthansen  and  Schnitzler. 


THE  PEASANT  AND    THE  EMANCIPATION.  415 

These  various  grades  and  forms  of  bondage  can  be  reduced  to  two 
types,  which  were  in  general  use  to  the  last :  the  labor  dues 
(the  French  corvSe,  boycirsh-tchina^  for  short  hhrsh-tchind),  and  the 
dues  in  money,  the  obrbk. 

~The  bhrsh-tchina — the  personal  service  rendered  by  the  serf 
to  his  landlord  in  labor — was  the  primitive,  the  rudimentary  form. 
The  peasants  worked  three  days  for  the  landlord,  the  other  half  of 
the  week  they  attended  to  the  lands  which  he  gave  up  to  them, 
for  their  support.*  The  transformation  of  the  labor  dues  into  an 
annual  payment  in  money  was  a  great  improvement,  a  very  real 
relief.  This  system  prevailed  chiefly  in  the  neighborhood  of 
manufacturing  centres,  or  in  regions  with  poor  soil.  By  the  pay- 
ment of  the  obrbk  the  peasant  temporarily  ransomed  his  personal 
liberty,  and  could  leave  his  landlord's  estate,  to  ply  a  craft  in  the 
towns  or  other  country  places.  This  arrangement  enabled  many 
peasants  to  give  up  rural  pursuits  altogether.  Only,  they  were 
liable  to  be  called  back  to  the  plough  at  any  moment  by  a  word 
from  the  master.  This  was  a  way  to  ' '  get  round ' '  the  law,  to 
defeat  the  original  object  of  serfdom,  that  of  attaching  each  man 
to  the  soil :  the  ^^r^/fe-paying  serf  became  virtually  his  own  mas- 
ter. Ostensibly,  he  was  free  ;  but  an  invisible  link  bound  him  to 
his  landlord.  The  amount  of  the  yearly  payment  varied  consid- 
erably according  to  localities,  the  master's  exactingness,  the  indi- 
"vidual  aptitude  of  the  serfs.  On  an  average  the  obrbk  oscillated 
between  five  and  ten  dollars  a  year.  At  this  rate  a  landlord, 
clearly,  could  not  be  really  wealthy  unless  he  owned  villages  or 
rather,  whole  districts.  The  petty  landlords  were  actually  com- 
pelled by  penury  to  draw  from  their  serfs  all  they  could  possibly 
grind  out  of  them.  The  peasant  whose  lot  was  cast  with  the 
owner  of  broad  acres,  whom  wealth  enabled  to  be  liberal,  was 
more  fortunate  ;  he  was  habitually  subjected  to  a  fixed  rate  of  pay- 

*By  a  law  issued  in  1797,  by  Paul  I.,  the  bhrsh-tchina  was  fixed  at  three 
^ays.  In  many  communes  or  families  one  half  of  the  members  worked  for 
the  master  all  the  week,  while  the  others  worked  for  the  benefit  of  the 
household. 


4l6      THE  EMPIRE  OF   THE    TSARS  AND   THE  RUSSIANS. 

ment.  Few  masters  took  advantage  of  their  people's  capacity  for 
and  success  in  business  to  raise  their  obrbk.  Great  landlords  might 
be  named — a  Sheremetieflf  among  others — who  numbered  among 
their  serfe  millionaire  merchants,  and  who  would  have  scorned  to 
claim  any  of  their  wealth,  but  who  indulged  their  vanity  by  refus- 
ing to  let  them  ransom  themselves. 

The  ' '  Crown  peasants  "  or  "  free  peasants, ' '  settled  on  State 
lands,  were  all  on  the  obrbk  system.  Over  and  above  the  poll-tax 
and  the  local  taxes,  they  paid  the  State  a  yearly  due  which  might 
be  regarded  as  a  sort  of  land-rent,  and  which  oscillated  between 
two  and  three  roubles  for  each  male  peasant.  These  peasants, 
with  no  landlord  but  the  State,  enjoyed  two  great  advantages : 
the  dues  they  paid  were  fixed  and  very  moderate  ;  and  they  were 
not  exposed  to  change  of  masters,  variable  in  their  humor  and 
ways  of  doing  business.  They  were  allowed  to  enjoy  some  com- 
munal franchises,  and,  at  the  time  of  the  emancipation,  their 
institutions  partly  served  as  models  for  the  administrative  organi- 
zation of  the  liberated  serfs.  In  spite  of  the  oppression  and 
extortions  to  which  they  were  occasionally  subjected  by  corrupt 
functionaries,  the  "Crown  peasants"  were  generally  better  off 
than  those  on  private  lafldsr  -  To  this  day  their  villages  have  a 
look  of  greater  prosperity,  by  which  they  are  often  known  at  first 
sight.  These  peasants  of  the  State  demesnes,  attached  to  the 
glebe  like  the  others,  formerly  constituted  a  living  treasury  or 
reserve  fund,  from  which  the  sovereign  took  the  grants  which  he 
distributed  to  his  servants  in  the  form  of  lands  stocked  with  serfs. 
Catherine  II.  made  use  of  this  fund  on  a  large  scale,  for  the 
endowment  and  gratification  of  her  ministers  and  favorites ;  but 
she  was  the  last  to  practise  these  liberties,  which  are  one  of  the 
blots  on  her  reign.  To  the  Emperor  Alexander  I.  is  due  the 
credit  of  having  put  a  stop  to  these  gifts  of  men,  and  created  a 
class  of  free  husbandmen. 

Serfdom  in  Russia,  like  slavery  in  America,  has  had  its 
defenders  in  the  past  and  is  not  even  yet  without  panegyrists. 


THE   PEASANT  AND    THE  EMANCIPATION.  417 

There  is  no  doubt  that  servitude  was  not,  for  the  peasant,  without 
some  compensation.  If  the  serf  endured  hardships  from  being 
subject  to  his  landlord's  guardianship,  he  also  benefited  thereby ;  if 
he  served  the  master,  the  master  protected  him.  Not  being  based 
on  conquest,  as  in  the  Baltic  provinces,  nor  on  difference  of  race,  like 
American  slavery,  serfdom  in  Russia  preserved  to  the  end  a  certain 
benignity,  something  more  paternal,  more  patriarchal.  It  is  no 
less  certain  that,  in  spite  of  many  attenuating  traits  due  to  custom 
and  law,  such  a  system  worked  harm  in  the  end, — harm  to  the 
country,  harm  to  the  bondsman,  harm  to  the  master  himself. 
The  peasant  who  fell  into  the  hands  of  a  whimsical,  corrupt,  or  dis- 
solute man,  was  exposed  to  every  kind  of  wretchedness,  oppres^~ 
sion,  ignominy,  the  law  being  unable  to  shield  him  efficiently 
from  the  landlord's  cupidity,  brutality,  or  lawlessness.  There 
was  in  serfdom  one  incurable  evil :  the  violence  done  to  the 
human  conscience,  the  obliteration  of  moral  responsibility. 

Nor  was  the  economic  evil  less  great ;  the  institution  yielded 
little  profit  to  the  class  for  whose  benefit  it  existed.  Although 
the  right  of  owning  ' '  inhabited  lands ' '  extended  to  the  entire 
hereditary  nobility,  there  were,  at  the  moment  of  the  emancipa- 
tion, not  over  one  himdred  odd  thousand  serf  holders,  and  of  these 
the  greater  part  barely  enjoyed  a  competency.  Three  or  four 
thousand  of  them  owned  no  land,  for  in  the  eighteenth  century 
serfs  had  come  to  be  sold  without  land.*  To  be  at  all  well  off, 
one  had  to  own  hundreds  of  "  souls  "  ;  to  be  wealthy,  thousands, 

*  Owing  to^  the  imperfection  of  statistical  proceedings,  the  figures 
given  on  the  division  of  properties  and  serfs  present  notable  discrepancies. 
A  little  over  two  million  "souls,"  i.  e.,  male  peasants,  the  only  ones  sub- 
ject to  capitation  and  set  down  in  the  "revisions"  (census),  were  divided 
among  less  than  80,000  owners,  who  had  from  i  to  100  "souls"  each,  and 
were  accounted  as  "  petty  landlords. "  Five  and  a  half  millions  were  allotted 
to  22,000  owners,  having  from  100  to  1,000  "  souls  "  each,  and  regarded  as 
''medium  landlords."  Lastly  there  were  1,400  serf-holders,  owning  more 
than  1,000  male  peasants  each,  with  a  total,  between  them,  of  three  mil- 
lion souls,  and  they  were  accounted  "great  landlords."  Of  these,  some 
few  families — the  SheremdtieflFs  for  one — had  on  their  lands  as  many  as 
100,000  serfs. 


41 8      THE  EMPIRE  OF   THE    TSARS  AND   THE  RUSSIANS. 

SO  little  did  serfdom  produce,  so  terrible  was  the  depreciation  of 
labor  caused  by  this  confiscation  of  it  through  several  centuries. 
The  peasants'  unpaid  labor  did  not  sufl&ce  for  the  support  even 
of  those  who  held  the  monopoly  of  it.  Servile  labor  used  to  be 
discounted  and  consumed  years  ahead  by  numbers  of  landlords. 
At  the  moment  of  emancipation,  two  thirds  of  the  "inhabited 
lands"  peopled  with  serfs,  or,  in  plainer  words,  two  thirds  of  the 
serfs  themselves  (for  it  was  at  the  rate  of  so  much  per  head  that 
the  banks  effected  their  loans),  were  found  to  be  mortgaged  in  the 
lombards  or  credit  establishments  kept  by  the  State.  Frequently, 
therefore,  the  pomiish-tchik  had  only  the  semblance  of  proprietor- 
ship, and  the  sums  loaned  by  the  State  on  human  capital,  instead 
of  being  sunk  into  the  ground  and  there  bearing  interest,  were 
usually  squandered  in  dissipation  and  hospitalities. 
/  One  is  astonished  at  such  a  state  of  things  having  lasted  so 
/  long.  In  a  certain  sense  serldom  might  be  said  never  to  have 
I  been  thoroughly  accepted  by  the  people  themselves.  Several 
times,  in  the  seventeenth  and  eighteenth  centuries,  the  peasants 
rose  to  the  cry  of  liberty,  under  such  leaders  as  Stienka  R^in  and 
;ugatch6f.  The  Crown  which  had  imposed  it,  the  nobility  which 
was  supposed  to  benefit  by  it,  had  long  looked  on  serfdom  as  on 
an  irretrievably  doomed  temporary  institution.  It  is  likely  that 
the  emancipation  would  not  have  been  so  long  delayed,  but  for 
the  apprehensions  aroused  by  the  revolutionary  troubles  in  Europe, 
which  appeared  calculated  to  hasten  the  operation.  The  Emperor 
/  Alexander  I.  seemed  created  for  just  such  work.  He  prepared 
/I  the  way  for  it  by  a  partial  experiment — that  of  ordering  the 
manumission  of  the  serfs  of  the  three  Baltic  provinces  :  the  Ehst 
and  Lett  peasants,  the  most  oppressed  of  all,  because  they  were  of 
another  race  than  their  German  conquerors  and  masters.  The 
Emperor  Nicolas,  following  his  brother's  example,  lightened 
and  loosened  as  much  as  possible  the  bonds  he  dared  not  break. 
Emancipation  was  his  pet  scheme.  On  the  eve  of  1848  he  had 
already  appointed,  to  study  the  question,  a  secret   committee, 


\ 


THE  PEASANT  AND    THE  EMANCIPATION.  419 

which  the  February  revolution  caused  to  be  dissolved.  The 
disasters  of  the  Crimean  War  had,  in  his  latter  days,  led  his 
thoughts  back  to  the  same  projects.  It  is  affirmed  that,  on  his 
deathbed,  Nicolas  bequeathed  to  his  son  and  successor  the  task 
which  he  himself  had  been  prevented  from  undertaking.  On  the 
whole  it  may  have  been  fortunate  for  the  empire  that  the  great  J^ 
work  was  not  started  sooner  :  the  preparatory  studies  were  more  \ 
matured,  the  task  itself  was  carried  out  more  boldly. 

One  of  the  things  that  should  on  no  accoimt  be  lost  sight  of 
by  any  one  desirous  of  fully  understanding  the  transformation  of 
contemporary  Russia,  is  the  part  taken  in  it  by  public  opinion 
and  public  spirit.  lyiterature  which,  in  modern  nations,  always 
opens  and  shows  the  way, — literature  in  all  its  forms :  poetry, 
fiction,  drama,  history,  criticism,  had  done  its  work  ;  it  only  had 
to  direct  the  attention  of  the  higher  classes  towards  the  people,  its 
life  and  manners.  As  in  America,  the  novelists  became  the 
apostles  and  prophets  of  emancipation.  But  Russia  has  some- 
thing better  than  Uncle  Tom's  Cabin  and  the  didactic  novels 
of  the  American  women.  In  Gogol's  Dead  Souls,  and  Ivan 
Turgu^nief  s  Memoirs  of  a  Huntsman,  she  has  pictures  admirable 
for  truth  and  earnestness,  or,  more  correctly,  mirrors,  in  which, 
as  in  polished  glass,  are  reflected,  unaltered  in  either  outline  or 
coloring,  the  countenances  of  both  serfs  and  masters.*  The 
press  debated  the  conditions  of  the  reform,  an  ardent  desire  for 
which  wa^  aroused  by  the  novelists.  On  this  one  point  the  two 
currents  which  usually  carry  the  Russian  mind  opposite  ways,  for 
,once  carried  it  in  the  same  direction.  All  the  schools,  whether 
'Slavophils  or  Occidentals,  liberals,  or  democrats,  were  at  one  on 
'this  issue  ;  the  cause  numbered  amidst  its  advocates  Nicolas  Tur- 
guenief,  Samdrin,  and  Herzen.  It  was  neither  a  sovereign,  soli- 
tary in  his  power,  nor  a  few  exceptional  individuals,  fashioned 

*  Russia  may  be  said  to  have  her  counterpart  of  Uncle  Tom's  Cabin  in  the 
stories  written  by  a  woman,  Mme.  Mark^vitch  (M4rko-Vovtch6k).  These 
stories,  written  in  the  Little-Russian  dialect,  had  the  honor  of  being  trans* 
lated  into  Russian  by  Ivan  Turgu^nief. 


420      THE  EMPIRE  OF  THE    TSARS  AND   THE  RUSSIANS. 

by  foreign  discipline,  who  led  the  nation,  using  bridle,  spur, 
^XMT  whip,  as  the  case  might  be, — it  was  public  spirit,  public  opin- 
ion, which  gave  the  impulse.  This  was  a  national  movement, 
comparable  in  a  way  to  that  which,  in  the  West,  had  culminated 
in  the  French  Revolution.  This  phenomenon,  so  novel  in  the 
history  of  Russia,  is  in  itself  as  worthy  of  attention  as  the  emanci- 
pation and  all  its  accompanying  reforms.  In  this  respect  the 
work  done  by  Alexander  II.  is  totally  different  from  that  accom- 
plished by  Peter  the  Great,  and  shows  the  stride  taken  by  the 
country  in  the  interval :  the  first  work  was  that  of  a  man ;  this 
latter  one  is  that  of  a  nation.  Russia,  on  the  eve  of  the  emanci- 
pation, appears  not  as  a  sort  of  inert  material,  for  governments  to 
experiment  on,  or,  to  borrow  the  expression  of  a  frenchified 
Russian,  as  a  sociological  laboratory ;  it  is  a  nation  that  is  coming 
I  of  age  and,  not  content  with  blindly  following  the  paternal 
guidance,  works  out  its  own  development. 

And  yet,  however  carefully  prepared,  however  desired  of  the 
nation  and  public  opinion,  the  emancipation  might  have  hung 
fire  for  years  still,  but  for  the  bitter  disappointment  entailed  by^ 
the  Crimean  War.  There  are,  in  the  lives  of  all  nations, 
reforms  of  such  deep  import,  so  complicated,  touching  on  so  many 
interests,  that  those  at  the  helm  make  up  their  minds  to  tackle 
them  only  under  the  pressure  of  some  mighty  event,  under 
the  threat  of  some  national  peril  or  calamity.  For  nations  as  for 
individuals,  adversity  frequently  is  the  best  counsellor.  A  blow 
dealt  from  abroad,  a  military  disaster,  has  more  than  once  been 
—the  point  of  departure  of  the  moral  renovation  of  a  great  people. 
What  Jena  was  to  Prussia  and  Germany,  what  Novara  was  to 
Piedmont  and  Italy, — that  the  Crimean  War  was  to  Russia,  though 
it  scarcely  altered  her  frontier.  This  campaign,  so  barren  of 
results  for  the  Porte,  which,  under  shelter  of  the  West,  only  grew 
more  and  more  corrupt,  has  teemed  with  results  for  the  vanquished 
empire.     The  fall  of  Sebast6pol  was  serfdom's  death-blow. 

I  have  been  told  that  a  quondam  serf  kept  in  his  room  a 


THE  PEASANT  AND    THE  EMANCIPATION.  42 1 

portrait  of  Napoleon  III.  with  this  inscription  :  To  the  Liberator 
of  the  Serfs.  After  the  Crimean  War,  it  appears,  the  rumor  spread 
among  the  peasantry  of  certain  provinces,  that  the  Emperor  of  the 
French  demanded  the  abolition  of  serfdom,  and  had  consented  to 
sign  a  treaty  of  peace  only  on  condition  that  a  secret  clause  should  be 
inserted  insuring  the  liberation  of  the  serfs.*  May  be  there  lurked 
in  this  rumor  a  vague  remembrance  of  the  hopes  excited  by  Napoleon 
I.  in  1812,  At  all  events,  this  popular  belief  was  nothing  less  than, 
imder  a  childish  form,  an  instinctive  presentiment  of  the  inevitable 
connection  of  events.  It  was  indeed,  although  they  knew  it  not,  for 
the  benefit  of  the  mujik,  of  the  Russian  people,  that  France  and 
Kngland  were  fighting.  In  this  respect  Russia's  defeat  was  a 
stroke  of  good-fortune  for  her  ;  never  perhaps  did  a  country  buy 
its  national  regeneration  so  cheap.  Of  a  war  of  which  the  issue 
cost  her  only  some  pangs  of  wounded  vanity,  of  a  peace  the 
humiliating  clauses  of  which  were  promptly  obliterated,  nothing 
was  left  to  her  but  an  enduring  inner  transformation. 

*  This  rumor  is  mentioned  by  Tchemysh^fsky,  in  his  Letters  zvithout 
an  Address,  published  in  the  Vperidd  {1S74). 


BOOK  VII.     CHAPTER  II. 

Questions  Raised  by  the  Emancipation — Expectations  and  Disappointments 
of  the  Nobility — Agrarian  Laws — Was  it  Possible  to  Free  the  Serfs 
without  Giving  them  Lands? — Reasons  and  Conditions  of  the  Terri- 
torial Endowment  of  the  Peasants. 

It  was,  then,  a  national  movement  which,  under  the  pressure 
of  defeat,  urged  on  emancipation  from  all  sides.  Should  the 
nation  take  a  direct  part  in  it  ?  Should  the  Tsar,  like  Catherine 
II.,  and  with  design  better  defined,  call  together  the  delegates  of 
the  difierent  classes  into  a  sort  of  States-General  ?  Some  thought 
he  should.  It  was  announced  that,  by  way  of  compensation 
for  the  loss  of  their  serfs,  the  nobility  were  to  be  given  political 
rights,  and  that,  out  of  the  emancipation,  would  grow  a  constitu- 
tion. This  hope  did  much  to  enlist  the  landlords  and  the  nobiliary 
assemblies  in  favor  of  the  project.  In  spite  of  appearances,  it  is 
probably  fortunate  that  things  did  not  take  this  course  ;  that  the 
government  did  not  invite  the  delegates  of  the  nobility  to  deliber- 
ate and  to  pass  laws,  but  only  consulted  them.  On  the  question 
of  the  necessity  of  the  emancipation,  opinion  was  nearly  unani- 
mous throughout  the  empire ;  on  that  of  ways  and  means,  and 
that  of  the  position  to  be  given  the  peasants  when  free,  there  was 
in  the  public  and  in  the  government  itself  a  very  Babel  of  confused 
and  discordant  views.  An  elective  assembly,  numerous  and 
tumultuous,  would  have  had  some  trouble  in  sifting  and  clearing 
such  a  chaos.  Then,  to  be  equitable  or  impartial,  an  assembly 
should  have  included  representatives  of  the  opposed  parties — of 
both  serfs  and  landlords.  The  former  could  not  be  called  upon  to 
ordain  their  own  future ;  yet  it  would  have  been  unfair  to  leave 

422 


THE  PEASANT  AND    THE  EMANCIPATION.  423 

the  deliberation  to  the  masters  alone.  Between  peasant  and 
pomiesh-tchik  there  was  but  one  natural  judge,  one  disinterested 
umpire  :  the  Crown.  The  situation  was  one  where  autocracy, 
exalted  above  all  classes  and  true  to  its  mission — impartiality, — 
was  the  meetest  tribunal  for  rendering  an  equitable  sentence. 

The  nobiliary  assemblies  of  the  different  provinces  were  invited 
to  investigate  the  question  and  report  their  opinion ;  but  the 
inditing  of  the  project  was  entrusted  to  commissions  directly 
appointed  by  the  sovereign.  These  commissions  were  composed 
partly  of  high  functionaries,  such  as  Nicolas  Miliutin,  the  chief 
inspirer  of  the  Statute,  partly  of  landlords  or  "experts,"  mostly 
taken  from  the  minorities  of  the  provincial  committees,  such  as 
Prince  Tcherk^sky  and  Yiiri  (George)  Samdrin,  allies  and  fol- 
lowers of  Miliutin.  In  these  "  drafting  commissions  "  {Commis- 
sions de  ridadion)  the  interests  of  the  landlords  did  not  lack 
defenders ;  nor  was  it  without  arduous  struggles  that  the  majority, 
directed  by  Miliutin  and  his  friends,  brought  about  the  triumph 
of  their  ideas  and  their  acceptance  by  the  sovereign.* 

The  project,  elaborated  by  the  commissions,  was  incomparably 
more  favorable  to  the  people  than  the  views  adopted  by  most 
local  assemblies.  The  bases  of  it,  indeed,  were  considered  so 
democratical,  that  sundry  clauses  were  modified  through  court 
influences.  To  the  end  of  the  reign  of  Alexander  II. ,  a  portion 
of  the  official  world  inclined  more  or  less  openly  to  retract  several 
of  the  principles  proclaimed  on  the  19th  of  February,  1861. 

The  landed  nobility  did  not  attempt  to  conceal  their  dis- 
approval as  well  of  the  democratic  tendencies  in  favor  in  the 
"drafting  commissions,"  as  of  the  manner  in  which  the  govern- 
ment had  set  them  aside  from  participation  in  a  task  in  which 
it    had,    at  first,    invited    their    co-operation.      Several    of   the 

*  I  have  told  in  another  book,  from  the  unpublished  correspondence  of 
Milidtin,  Tcherkslssky,  and  Samdrin,  the  struggles  and  vicissitudes  through 
which  the  emancipation  had  to  pass.  See  :  A  Russian  Statesman  front  his 
Unpublished  Correspondence  {Un  Homme  d^tat  Russe  d'aprh  sa  Corre- 
Spondance  Inidite). 


424      THE  EMPIRE  OF   THE   TSARS  AND    THE  RUSSIANS. 

great  landlords  gave  loud  expression  to  their  disappointment  at 
being  denied  a  share  in  a  reform  which  they  had  hoped  to  direct ; 
and  that,  too,  in  favor  of  a  bureaucratic  commission  which 
appeared  to  have  no  other  task  than  that  of  collecting  and  reducing 
into  a  code  the  views  of  the  provincial  committees  of  landlords.* 
This  was  the  nobility's  first  disappointment,  and  a  heavy  one. 

The  passions  and  angry  feelings  aroused  by  these  questions 
were  so  violent  that  the  principal  inditers  of  the  Emancipation 
Act,  while  they  were  able  to  overcome  opposition,  could  not  quell 
the  personal  grudges  which  accumulated  against  them.  Imme- 
diately after  the  proclamation  of  the  Statute,  of  which  they  had 
been  the  most  zealous  instigators,  N.  Miliutin  and  his  fiiends, 
loudly  abused  as  "reds"  and  "radicals,"  both  at  court  and  in 
society,  fell  into  a  scarce  disguised  disgrace.  The  work  was  sanc- 
tioned, the  makers  were  sacrificed.  Nothing  less  than  the  Polish 
insurrection  was  needed  to  cause  the  government  to  call  once 
more  for  the  services  of  Miliutin  and  Tcherk^ky.f  This  incon- 
sistency, apparently  incomprehensible,  was  not  due  solely  to  the 
sovereign's  hesitations  to  court  intrigues.  By  dismissing  Miliutin, 
at  the  very  moment  when  it  seemed  but  natural  to  entrust  him 
with  the  practical  application  of  the  laws  drawn  up  by  his  fiiends 
and  by  himself,  Alexander  intended  to  pacify  public  feeling.  In 
order  to  put  an  end  to  the  uneasiness  and  the  grumblings  of  the 
nobility,  half  crazed  by  the  phantom  of  impending  ruin,  he  took 
the  execution  of  his  ukhzes  out  of  the  hands  of  a  man  reputed  to 
be,  systematically,  opposed  to  the  nobility,  and  entrusted  it  to 
persons  who  could  not  be  suspected  of  hostility  against  it. 

*  See,  for  instance,  the  Letter  from  a  Committeeman  (Count  Orldf- 
Dav^dof )  to  the  President  of  the  Drafting  Commission,  Paris,  1859. 

t  "  I  am  given  leave  of  absence  for  a  whole  year,  or,  more  correctly,  I 
am  shelved  by  being  made  a  senator  ..."  wrote  N.  Miliutin  to  Tcherkissky 
in  May,  1861.  "  I  had  asked  only  for  a  four  months'  leave  ;  but  the  reaction 
helped  me  out.  I,ansk6y  and  myself  [Lanskdy  was  the  Minister  of  the 
Interior  and  Miliiitin  his  assistant]  had  to  clear  out  of  the  cabinet  to  please 
the  nobility." 


THE  PEASANT  AND   THE  EMANCIPATION.  425 

The  excessive  demands  put  forward  by  the  peasants  gradually 
reconciled  the  greater  part  of  the  nobility  to  the  Emancipation 
Act.  Once  they  found  themselves  face  to  face  with  the  distrust  and 
the  rapacity  of  their  former  serfs,  the  landlords  were  brought  to 
look  on  the  Statute,  so  fiercely  attacked  by  many  of  their  number, 
as  on  their  ' '  anchor  of  salvation. ' '  Experience  soon  convinced 
most  of  them  of  the  inanity  of  the  illusions  they  had  entertained 
concerning  the  mujik's  supposed  attachment  and  docility.* 

The  advantages  provided  for  the  peasants  by  men  like  Milititin, 
Tcherk^ssky,  Samdrin,  account  for  the  rancor  which  they  aroused. 
For  truly,  nowhere  did  the  lawmaker  take  such  thought  for  the 
interests  of  the  quondam  serf.  The  task  accomplished  by  Russia 
was  not  unexampled  or  unprecedented  in  Europe.  To  mention 
only  neighboring  states,  Prussia  and  Austria  had,  in  this  very 
century,  at  different  intervals,  accomplished  analogous  ones, 
though  on  a  more  modest  scale.  The  emancipation  as  conducted 
in  Prussia  after  Jena,  under  the  inspiration  of  Baron  von  Stein, 
was  to  the  Russians  a  lesson  by  which  they  profited,  without, 
however,  copying  anybody's  proceedings.!  Two  things  especially 
distinguished  from  others  the  method  adopted  at  Petersburgh. 

*  "What  did  and  still  does  most  contribute  to  convince  the  nobility  of 
the  absolute  necessity  of  doing  as  we  have  done,  is  the  attitude  of  the 
peasants,  into  daily  conflicts  with  whom  the  landlords  are  being  forced  ;  it 
is,  more  especially,  the  demands  of  the  peasants,  and,  above  all,  the  radical 
distrust  of  the  entire  bearded  Orthodox  population  towards  the  nobles.  The 
latter  had,  much  against  the  grain,  to  give  up  the  idea  that  their  former  serfs 
placed  in  them  an  unlimited  confidence ;  the  landlords'  eyes  have  been  opened 
in  this  respect  as  completely  as  possible.  .  .  .  Everybody,  at  the  present  hour, 
has  been  made  to  see  how  indispensable  was  a  detailed  and  precise  statute, 
and  how  unfounded  were,  for  the  most  part,  the  malevolent  outcries  and 
uproar  which  have  been  kept  up  through  two  years  against  the  '  drafting 
commissions '  and  their  supposed  mania  for  subjecting  everything  to  regu- 
lations." (Unpublished  I,etter  from  Prince  Tcherk^ky  to  N.  Milidtin, 
dated  July  the  23,  1861.) 

\  See,  for  the  examples  given  to  Russia  by  foreign  countries,  the  History 
of  the  Abolition  of  Slavery  and  Serfdom  in  Europe,  by  Samuel  Sugenheim 
(St.  Petersburgh,  1861) ;  and  Samdrin's  study  on  the  Abolition  of  Serfdom 
in  Prussia,  reprinted  in  1879,  in  vol.  ii.  of  his  collected  works. 


426      THE  EMPIRE  OF   THE    TSARS  AND    THE  RUSSIANS. 

Not  content  with  giving  the  peasants  their  bare,  personal  liberty, 
Russia  endowed  them  with  lands.  Instead  of  leaving  the  manu- 
mitted peasants,  as  Prussia  did  in  1809  and  1848,  under  the 
patronage  and  tutelage  of  their  former  lords,  to  linger  on  in  a 
sort  of  administrative  servitude,  Russia  at  one  stroke  converted 
the  former  serfs  into  communes  independent  of  their  late  masters. 
While  the  Bauer  of  Eastern  Prussia  remained,  at  least  imtil  the 
reforms  of  1872,  subject  and  vassal  to  the  Ritterschaft,  the  Russian 
mujik^  thanks  to  his  ownership  of  land  and  to  the  autonomy  of 
his  commune,  was  fully  emancipated,  at  once  economically  and 
administratively. 

The  main  object  of  the  system  adopted  in  Russia  was  to 
provide  the  freedmen  with  lands,  to  convert  the  serfs  into  land- 
holders. There,  naturally,  also  lay  the  main  difl&culty.  In  the 
opinion  of  a  part  of  the  nobility,  in  that  of  many  politicians,  it 
was  sufficient  to  give  the  peasants  their  personal  liberty.  That  is 
what  Alexander  I.  did  for  the  serfs  of  the  Baltic  provinces.  What 
is  serfdom  ?  asked  the  theoreticians  of  this  system.  It  is  the 
labor  of  one  man,  gratuitously  conceded  to  another  man.  To 
abolish  serfdom,  it  is  enough  to  abolish  unrequited  labor.*  How, 
they  went  on,  was  serfdom  established  ?  By  a  police  regulation, 
forbidding  the  peasants  to  pass  from  one  domain  to  another. 
How  is  this  institution  to  be  annulled  ?  By  restoring  to  the  mujik 
the  right  of  coming  and  going.  Conceived  in  this  way,  emancipa- 
tion would  have  been  a  very  simple  operation  ;  but  what  would 
have  been  the  results?  The  peasant  would  have  recovered  his 
liberty  only  to  fall  into  a  condition  often  more  miserable  than 
that  which  he  endured  in  the  time  of  his  bondage.  He  would 
have  remained  for  years,  maybe  for  centuries,  totally  debarred 
from  the  holding  of  land.  All  this  host  of  freedmen  would  have 
been  turned  into  a  nation  of  proletarians.     Thus  argued  the 

*  This  opinion,  which  pretended  to  be  based  on  the  data  of  political 
economy,  was  upheld  by  numbers  of  foreign  economists.  (See,  for  example, 
Molinari's  Letters  on  Russia.) 


THE  PEASANT  AND    THE  EMANCIPATION.  427 

partisans  of  territorial  endowment,  and  their  opinion  carried  the 
day  in  the  commission,  with  the  public,  and  with  the  sovereign.* 

Through  these  views,  most  justifiable  in  all  that  concerned  the 
liberation  of  the  serfs,  showed  a  high  ambition,  not  exempt  from 
self-delusion.  A  worthy,  tempting  object  surely  :  to  create  not 
merely  a  nation  of  freemen,  but  one  of  land-holders.  Press  and 
public  kept  repeating  that  the  only  escape  from  the  evils  of 
ancient  societies  lay  in  not  falling  into  those  of  modem  societies 
— pauperism  and  proletariate.  By  giving  lands  to  the  serfs,  it 
was  confidently  hoped  to  avoid  proletariate,  and  to  avoid  prole- 
tariate was  to  steer  clear  of  the  social  and  political  commotions  of 
the  West. 

The  Russian  government  was  thus  led  on  to  create,  in  favor 
of  the  peasants,  a  veritable  agrarian  law,  a  sort  of  territorial  ex- 
propriation for  reasons  of  public  weal.  It  has  frequently  been 
blamed  for  this,  so-called,  revolutionary  measure.  This  forced 
distribution  of  lands  taken  from  the  nobility  has  been  compared 
to  the  confiscations  and  creations  of  national  property  perpetrated 
by  the  French  Revolution.  Such  comparisons  are  strangely  ex- 
aggerated. In  order  justly  to  appreciate  these  measures,  political 
necessity  must  not  alone  be  taken  into  account,  but  the  ambiguous 
origin,  the  obscurity,  the  uncertainty  of  the  Russian  laws  on 
property  should  also  be  remembered.  Whose,  in  reality,  was  the 
soil — the  landlord's  or  the  peasant's  ?    Both  had  claims.     If  the 

*  Address  delivered  by  the  Emperor  in  the  "Council  of  the  Empire," 
on  January  28,  1861.  In  it  he  openly  deplored  the  manner  in  which  the 
emancipation  had  been  accomplished  in  the  Baltic  provinces  and  the  king- 
dom of  Poland.  For  Poland,  the  rising  of  1863  was  soon  to  supply  the 
government  with  an  occasion  to  apply,  with  the  assistance  of  the  same  men, 
— Milititin,  Tcherk^ssky,  and  their  friends, — the  same  principles  to  the 
provinces  of  the  Visla.  As  to  the  Baltic  provinces,  the  land,  according  to  a 
system  in  use  in  several  parts  of  Germany,  has  been  divided  into  two  cate- 
gories :  the  Hqfland,  which  remains  at  the  free  disposal  of  the  former  lord, 
and  the  Bauerland,  which  can  be  sold  or  rented  only  to  peasants.  The 
agrarian  question,  repeatedly  raised  by  Russian  journalists,  produced  among 
the  Lett  and  Ehst  peasantry,  in  1882  and  1883,  an  agitation  not  unlike  that 
of  the  Irish  I/and  League. 


428      THE  EMPIRE  OF  THE    TSARS  AND   THE  RUSSIANS. 

law  decided  ofl&cially  in  favor  of  the  former,  the  latter  could 
appeal  to  custom,  at  least  as  far  as  those  lands  were  concerned, 
the  use  of  which  had  been  conceded  to  him  by  the  masters,  in 
obedience  to  traditional  habit.  If  the  pomihh-tchik  had  received 
his  estate  from  the  sovereign  in  exchange  for  his  services,  the 
mujik  could  be  considered  as  having  lived  on  and  had  the  use  of 
the  land  before  the  g^ant  was  made  to  his  landlord.*  Going  back 
to  the  beginning  of  things,  the  position  cotdd  be  upheld,  that  the 
domains,  with  their  serf  population,  which  often  alone  gave  them 
their  value,  never  had  constituted  full  property,  that  they  stood 
less  under  the  jurisdiction  of  the  civil  than  of  the  political  law, 
these  lands  having  been  granted  to  the  nobility  in  exchange  for 
services  from  which  they  had  gradually  exempted  themselves. t 

If  we  look  at  things  in  this  way,  the  Russian  government 
cannot  be  said  to  have  taken  from  one  side  to  give  to  the  other. 
Rather,  it  has  discriminated  between  rival  claims,  arbitrated 
between  conflicting  rights  and  interests,  by  holding  both  adverse 
parties  to  a  compromise.  The  peasant  received  a  portion  of  the 
land,  but  he  was  made  to  indemnify  his  former  landlord.  If,  on 
both  sides,  there  were  complaints  and  disappointments,  it  was 
because,  coming  down  from  theories  to  practical  ground,    the 

*  There  were,  indeed,  some  kinds  of  lands  to  which  this  line  of  argu- 
ment did  not  seem  to  apply,  such  as  the  recently  colonized  land  on  the 
Lower  Volga  and  in  New  Russia,  the  domains  on  which  the  landlords 
had  themselves  settled  peasants,  inviting  them  to  come.  Unfortunately,  it 
would  have  been  very  difficult  to  take  this  difference  into  account. 

t  We  saw  in  a  preceding  chapter  (Book  VI.,  Ch.  II.),  that  there  were 
originally  in  Russia  two  classes  of  landed  property  :  the  vdt-tchina  or 
*'  patrimony," — land  inherited  from  ancestors  ;  and  the  potniistiyt,  or 
"  grant-land,"  conceded  to  servants  of  the  state  for  their  support.  The 
estates  of  the  modem  nobles  generally  belong  to  the  latter  class  ;  but,  by 
exempting  the  nobility  from  the  burdens  and  personal  service  which  had 
long  been  obligatory  for  the  pomiish-tchik,  the  sovereigns  had  virtually 
transformed  the  pami^sttyi  into  a  vdt-tchina.  So  that,  in  this  respect,  the 
Emperor  Alexander  II.  may  be  said  to  have  strained  a  point  in  favor  of  the 
peasants,  by  ignoring  what  his  predecessors  had  done  for  the  nobility.  In 
strict  historical  equity,  the  emancipation  ought  to  have  taken  place  on  the 
day  on  which  the  pomiish-tchik  was  freed  from  the  obligation  of  serving 
the  state. 


THE  PEASANT  AND   THE  EMANCIPATION.  429 

tunpire's  sentence  could  not  satisfy  fully  either  of  the  two 
contestants. 

The  government's  decision  was  the  wiser,  that  an  opposite 
resolve  would  have  found  the  resistance  of  the  peasants  diflScult 
to  overcome.  And  under  such  a  system,  Russia  would  have  been 
forthwith  converted  into  an  immense  Ireland,  rife  with  agrarian 
troubles.  The  peasant,  serf  as  he  was,  never  ceased  to  consider 
himself  as  the  owner  of  the  land  he  cultivated,  that  land  at  least 
which  the  landlords  had  for  generations  allowed  him  to  use  for  his 
support.  "We  are  yours,"  said  the  serfs  to  their  masters,  "but 
the  land  is  ours."  To  give  them  their  liberty  and  at  the  same 
time  to  take  from  them  the  lands  of  which  they  had  the  use, 
would  have  seemed  to  the  mujik  a  hypocritical  form  of  spolia- 
tion.* As  it  is,  he  finds  it  hard  to  understand  why,  in  order  to 
become  full  owner  of  this  land  which  he  looked  on  as  his  own,  he 
should  have  to  indemnify  the  former  landlord,  who,  anyhow,  left 
it  to  him. 

When  the  manifesto  of  the  19th  of  February,  1861,  was  pub- 
lished, setting  forth  the  conditions  of  the  emancipation,  the 
peasants  could  not  conceal  their  disappointment.  In  the  churches, 
where  the  imperial  manifesto,  announcing  freedom,  was  read  to 
them,  they  murmured  aloud ;  more  than  one  shook  his  head, 
exclaiming,  "What  sort  of  liberty  is  that?"t    The  discontent 

*  Here  is  a  rather  edifying  story  to  the  point :  A  landlord  of  the  govern- 
ment of  Smolensk  had,  under  Alexander  I.,  drawn  up  a  plan  of  emancipa- 
tion which  would  have  given  to  each  peasant,  besides  his  liberty,  his  house 
with  the  enclosed  yard  or  "house-lot"  thereto  belonging.  "And  how 
about  the  arable  lands  ? "  asked  the  peasants,  when  he  laid  his  scheme 
before  them.  "I  shall  keep  those,"  answered  the  philanthropist-  "Well, 
then,  father"  {bdtiushka),  replied  the  serfs,  "suppose  we  leave  things  as 
they  are.     We  are  yours,  but  the  land  is  ours." 

t  A  word  quoted  in  the  memoirs  of  a  country  priest,  published  in  1880. 
"  During  the  reading,"  says  the  priest,  "  the  peasants  bowed  their  heads  ; 
it  was  easy  to  see  that  they  expected  nothing  good  from  that  sort  of  liberty. 
They  listened  as  to  a  sentence  of  banishment."  In  several  villages  the 
parish  priests  had  to  endure  all  sorts  of  persecutions  at  the  peasants'  hands, 
who  accused  them  of  having  suffered  themselves  to  be  bribed  by  the  land- 
lords to  conceal  from  their  parishioners  the  orders  of  the  Tsar. 


430      THE  EMPIRE  OF  THE   TSARS  AND    THE  RUSSIANS. 

was  universal.  In  many  localities  the  peasants  suspected  a  mys- 
tification. They  refused  to  believe  in  the  genuineness  of  the 
manifesto.  On  many  points  there  were  troubles,  and  the  police 
had  to  call  in  the  aid  of  the  military,  who,  in  some  villages,  were 
compelled  to  fire.  For  this  imlettered  people,  accustomed  by 
oppression  to  incurable  distrust,  the  balls  of  the  soldiers  were  the 
only  suflScient  demonstration  of  the  authenticity  of  the  imperial 
ordinances.* 

It  was  rumored  in  the  villages  that  the  manifesto  read  in  the 
churches  was  a  fabrication  of  the  landlords,  and  that  the  genuine 
Emancipation  Act  would  be  forthcoming  later  on  ;  there  may  even 
yet  be  peasants  who  are  looking  for  it  to  appear.  There  assuredly 
are  many  who  in  the  long  winter  evenings  dream  of  a  new  eman- 
cipation with  a  redistribution  of  lands,  gratuitous  this  time. 

It  took  the  peasants  several  years  thoroughly  to  understand 
the  conditions  on  which  liberty  was  given  them  and  to  become 
reconciled  to  them.  Truth  to  say,  these  poor  people  were  mostly 
quite  unqualified  to  comprehend  the  clauses  of  the  Statute.  They 
lacked  the  knowledge  of  legal  terms,  a  clear  notion  of  the  rights 
of  property,  indeed  of  liberty  itself;  they  also  were  wanting  in 
confidence  towards  their  masters  and  the  local  authorities  com- 
missioned to  explain  to  them  the  new  order  of  things.  Nothing 
could  be  more  characteristic  in  this  respect  than  the  lines  written 
fi-om  a  remote  province  to  N.  Milititin,  by  one  of  his  most  illus- 
trious fellow-workers,  one  of  the  most  earnest  and  devoted  lovers 
of  the  people,  the  Slavophil  Samdrin,  in  September,  1861  :  "  The 
chief  stumbling-block  is  the  peasants'  distrust  of  everything  and 
everybody.  Nothing  is  to  them  immutable  or  impracticable.  .  .  . 
Between  them  and  us  there  is  no  common  point  of  view ;  they 
have  not  a  peg  on  which  we  could  hang  otur  arguments.     They 

*  "  This  poor,  uncultured  mass,  imbued  ■with  a  profound  distrust  of  all 
that  surrounds  it,  seemed  anxious  to  stimulate  the  action  of  the  troops,  and 
to  challenge  repression,  because  force  has  until  now  been  to  the  people  the 
only  certain  pledge  of  the  sovereign  will." — [Unpublished  letter  from  Y6ri 
Sam&rin  to  N.  Mili&tin,  dated  August  17,  1862.] 


THE  PEASANT  AND    THE  EMANCIPATION.  43 1 

listen  to  us  attentively,  good-naturedly,  even  with  pleasure.  But, 
to  anything  you  say  to  them,  you  hear  the  same  answer  :  '  We 
are  ignorant,  bdtiushka '  /  we  know  nothing,  but  this  is  how  we 
reason  :  what  the  Tsar  commands,  that  should  be  done. '  '  But 
this  is  the  Tsar's  will ;  written  down  here,  in  this  book.*  '  Ah, 
but  how  should  we  know  that  ?  we  are  ignorant ;  what  there  is 
in  that  book,  we  know  it  not. '  .  .  .  And  thereupon  you  de- 
spondently feel  that  all  your  talk  glides  off  them  as  water  down  a 
slope.  The  peasants  submit  to  the  Statute  ;  they  submit  to  the 
Regulation  Contracts ;  but  in  their  own  hearts  they  remain 
deeply  attached  to  their  own  hopes,  and  it  will  be  long  before 
they  g^ve  them  up. ' ' 

This  same  spirit  shows  very  plainly  in  sundry  dissident  sects, 
those  especially  that  foretell  the  impending  wz7/f««zMW,  the ' '  descent 
of  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven. ' '  Several  years  after  the  publication  of 
the  Emancipation  Act,  certain  prophets  from  the  people,  one  Piish- 
kin  in  the  number,  announced  that,  by  the  will  of  God,  the  land 
was  soon  to  be  made  over  to  the  peasants,  with  nothing  to  pay.  A 
little  earlier,  in  1861,  there  appeared,  in  the  region  of  Kaz^n,  a 
pretender  or  pseudo-tsar  of  the  good  old  Russian  type.  A  certain 
Ant6n  Petrbf  gave  himself  out  among  the  peasants  for  the  Em- 
peror ;  driven  out  of  his  capital,  he  told  them,  by  the  nobles  and 
the  tchinbvniks  (bureaucrats),  who,  between  them,  had  altered 
his  manifesto  to  the  people's  detriment.  The  troops  had  to 
be  brought  out  against  this  embryo  Pugatch6f.  Thus  political 
vagaries  combined  with  religious  delusions,  the  frauds  of  im- 
postors and  tricksters  with  the  hallucinations  of  the  illmnined. 
Here  is  a  curious  instance  in  point,  that  came  to  my  knowledge 
in  the  government  of  Vor6nej.  A  seminary  student  on  his  vaca- 
tion trip  was  returning  from  the  country  with  no  money  left  and 
quite  at  a  loss  how  to  procure  horses  to  finish  his  journey,  when 

'  "  We  are  dark  people  "  is  the  standing  expression  which  peasants  use 
for  their  profession  of  ignorance.  Could  anything  be  more  graphic — and 
more  pathetic  ?  There  is  great  promise  in  a  people  who  have,  unaided, 
grasped  the  perception  that  ignorance  is  "  darkness,"  blindness. 


432       THE  EMPIRE   OF   THE    TSARS  AND   THE  RUSSIANS. 

he  hit  on  the  expedient  of  taking  advantage  of  the  mujik's 
credulity.  "  I  am,"  he  declared  to  the  peasants,  "  a  Grand  Duke 
travelling  incognito,  in  a  plain  teliiga  (springless  village  cart)  to 
judge  for  myself  of  your  condition,  and  to  see  what,  in  your 
interests,  should  be  altered  in  the  Emancipation  Act."  The 
stratagem  succeeded  ;  the  seminarist  got  taken  several  relays  on 
his  road,  hospitably  entertained  and  thanked  by  his  dupes. 
Numerous  political  trials,  from  1879  to  1883,  have  shown  how 
willingly  even  yet  the  mujik  lends  himself  to  mystification  on 
this  point. 

To  comprehend  the  material  position  and  the  feelings  of  the 
liberated  peasants,  one  .must  know  how.  hard  are  the  conditions 
of  this  diflficult  division  of  land,  this  sort  of  liquidation  between 
the  noble  landlord  and  his  former  serf,  which  Russia  is  carrying 
on  ever  since  1861.  The  principle  adopted  by  the  government  is 
that  of  a  compromise.  The  peasants  were  to  have  the  perennial 
use  of  their  dwelling  with  its  enclosed  appurtenances,  and,  further- 
more, lands  equivalent  to  the  fields  which  used  to  be  reserved  for 
their  support ;  but  these  lands  they  had  to  redeem  from  the  owners, 
who  were  made  to  give  them  up.  Yet  there  is  a  large  class  of 
serfs  who  have  been  given  no  lands,  consequently  have  no  pay- 
ments to  make ;  they  are  the  domestic  serfs  {dvorbvyii  liiidi,  or 
"  court  people  "),  i.  e.,  the  serfs  employed  in  domestic  service  and 
personal  attendance  on  their  masters.  There  was  a  good  reason 
for  passing  them  by — that  they  never  had  had  any  land,  having 
generally  oitirely  given  up  agricultural  life.  So  they  received 
their  personal  liberty  and  that  was  all.  Emancipation,  for  them, 
was  almost  immediate  ;  after  two  supplementary  years  of  gratui- 
tous service,  they  were  firee  to  leave  their  masters,  or  to  stay  with 
them  for  a  salary.  It  is  chiefly  among  this  dass,  many  of  whom 
swelled  the  ranks  of  urban  proletariate,  especially  among  the  old 
men,  that  numbers  were  found  unwilling  to  avail  themselves  of 
their  freedom. 

At  the  moment  of  the  emancipation  there  were  about  a  million 


THE  PEASANT  AND    THE  EMANCIPATION.  433 

and  a  half  of  these  domestic  serfs, — ^an  unnecessarily  large  num- 
ber. As  is  the  case  in  all  slaveholding  countries,  the  dwellings 
of  the  wealthy  were  cumbered  with  servants  of  both  sexes,  untidy, 
shiftless,  lazy — cooks,  valets,  coachmen,  grooms,  maids,  needle- 
women, waiting-women,  etc.  This  crowd,  half  civilized  and  half 
corrupted  by  life  in  the  cities  and  contact  with  the  masters, 
frequently  was  the  most  objectionable  and  unwholesome  portion 
of  the  serf  population.  The  facility  of  always  having  at  one's 
beck  and  call  hosts  of  men  and  women,  the  consequent  waste  of 
human  labor,  were  for  the  higher  classes  one  of  the  g^eat 
material  conveniences,  as  well  as  a  great  moral  evil,  of  serfdom. 
By  this  side  of  it,  Russian  life  came  nearer  that  of  the  planters  in 
the  colonies  than  the  European  mode  of  existence,  and  gave  to 
the  pomiish-tchik  the  indolent  habits  which  masters  of  slaves 
contract  everywhere. 

The  principle  of  territorial  endowment  once  accepted,  it 
remained  to  determine  what  quantity  of  land  should  be  conceded 
to  the  peasants.  In  a  country  so  vast,  it  was  impossible  to  set  up 
a  fixed  and  uniform  rule,  to  allot  the  same  quantity  of  land  to  all 
the  late  serfs.  The  government's  standard  was  that  each  lot  should 
be  suj0&cient  to  provide  for  one  family,  and  should  be  as  nearly  as 
possible  the  equivalent  of  the  lot  it  had  the  use  of  in  the  old  time. 
This  rule  also  being  admitted,  it  had  to  be  adapted  to  the  differ- 
ences of  soil  and  climate,  to  all  the  inequalities  of  the  population. 
In  spite  of  the  general  homogeneousness  and  uniformity  of  the 
Russian  soil,  this  operation  alone  required  colossal  labor.  Then 
the  relations  established  by  custom  between  master  and  peasant 
had  to  be  taken  into  consideration.  It  also  became  necessary  to 
have  recourse  to  several  distinct  regulations.  Special  regulations 
were  made  for  lyittle-Russia,  Lithuania,  and  the  former  Polish 
provinces.  Great-Russia  and  New-Russia — thirty-four  governments 
between  them,  over  two  thirds  of  the  entire  Russian  territory  in 
Europe — ^were  divided  into  three  wide  parallel  zones  or  belts, 

according  to  the  nature  of  the  soil  or  the  density  of  the  population : 

28 


434      TH^  EMPIRE  OF  THE    TSARS  AND    THE  RUSSIANS. 

the  northern  zone,  comprising  the  poorest  lands  ;  the  Black-Mould 
zone,  comprising  the  richest;  the  Steppe  zone,  comprising  the 
least  populous.  Each  of  these  great  zones  was  itself  subdivided 
into  ten  regions,  and  for  each  region  a  maximum  and  a  minimum 
were  fixed.  The  average  from  all  these  regions  g^ves  from  three 
to  four  dessiatinas  per  male  head.*  This  average  sometimes  rises 
to  seven  dessiatinas  in  the  north,  to  ten  in  the  steppes  of  the  south  ; 
it  sometimes  goes  down  to  two  dessiatinas  and  less  in  the  rich 
Black-Mould  region,  f  A  family  numbering  three  "  souls,"  /.  e., 
three  male  members,  thus  received  on  an  average  from  twenty  to 
twenty-five  acres, — which,  in  most  parts  of  the  country,  was  about 
what  they  used  to  have  in  the  times  of  serfdom.  Although  this 
equivalence  was  admitted  in  principle,  the  peasant's  advocates — 
Mililitin,  Samirin,  and  their  friends — were  not  always  able  to 
obtain  for  him  a  lot  equal  to  that  of  which  he  had  the  use  before 
his  liberation,  and,  when  it  came  to  practice,  the  manner  after 
which  the  division  was  effected  frequently  still  further  increased 
the  difference.  J    This  was  evidently  a  great  disappointment  to 

*  The  dessiatina  is  equal  to  about  2f  acres.  The  State  performed  a 
similar  operation  on  its  own  demesnes,  and  as  it  had,  as  a  rule,  given  up  to 
its  peasants  all  the  cultivable  lands,  they  have,  on  the  whole,  been  more 
favored  than  the  serfs  on  private  estates. 

t  Here  are  the  valuations  of  a  Russian  statistician,  Mr.  lanson,  concern- 
ing the  distribution  of  land  before  and  after  the  emancipation  (1876). 

BEFORE.  AFTER. 

I^ands  of  the  state 64. 6  per  cent.        Lands  of  the  state 45. 6  per  cent. 

"      "     ««    nobility... 30. 6    "     "  "       "     "  nobility.  ..22.6    "     " 

"      ••     "   appanages  3.3    "     "  "       "     "  appanages  1.8     "     " 

"      "     '•   peasants  "       "     "  peasants 

and  colonists. .   1.7    "     "  and  colonists.  .30.      "     " 

The  nobility,  which  before  1861,  according  to  the  same  authority,  owned 
105,000,000  of  dessiatinas,  (about  280,000,000  acres)  had  not  over  63,500,- 
000  left  in  1876,  while  the  former  serfs  owned  over  64,000,000  (about 
176,000,000  acres). 

X  Miliiitin's  adversaries  contrived  to  get  the  territorial  allotments  cut 
down  in  the  Drafting  Commission  itself.  Thus  Samdrin,  in  one  of  his  letters 
to  Miliiitin  (September,  1861)  complains  with  much  earnestness  that  Count 
Pdnin,  president  of  the  Commission  after  Rostdvtsef,  succeeded  in  lower- 
ing the  average  for  the  peasants  of  Samdra  from  5^  to  5  dessiatinas. 


THE  PEASANT  AND    THE  EMANCIPATION. 


435 


begin  with,  a  first  cause  of  discontent  for  the  peasant,  all  the  more 
that  the  increase  of  the  population  naturally  tends  to  curtail  every 
year  more  the  original  allotment.  That,  however,  was  not  the 
only  source  of  disappointment.  In  some  regions  the  territorial 
concession  was  manifestly  insufficient ;  in  many  others  it  was  as 
manifestly  too  onerous  for  the  peasant,  owing  to  the  rate  at  which 
the  redemption  was  fixed.  The  extent  of  the  allotted  lands  is, 
indeed,  only  one  side  of  the  question  ;  in  order  to  appreciate  the 
condition  of  the  fireedmen,  it  is  necessary  to  know  how  much  the 
land  cost  them,  and  in  what  way  they  were  enabled  to  pay  for  it. 


BOOK  VII.     CHAPTER  III. 

Manner  and  Conditions  of  Redeeming  the  Lands — Advances  Made  by  the 
Exchequer — Actual  State  of  the  Operation — Slackening  in  the  Last 
Years  of  Alexander  IL — How  there  still  Subsisted,  in  the  Form  of 
Labor  Dues,  a  Sort  of  Half  Servitude,  which  was  Abolished  only 
Under  Alexander  III. — Why  Landed  Property  is  often  a  Burden  to  the 
Freedmen — Unequal  Treatment  of  the  Peasants  in  the  DiflFerent  Regions 
— ^The  Gratuitous  "  Quarter  Lot" — ^The  Peasant's  Disappointment — In 
what  Manner  he  Understood  Liberty. 

So  vast  a  liquidation  could  not  be  accomplished  in  a  day.  It 
was  important  to  avoid  too  abrupt  a  transformation,  which  would 
have  landed  the  country  into  the  midst  of  a  most  dangerous  crisis. 
During  the  two  years  which  followed  the  Emancipation  Act,  all 
the  landlords  and  their  tenants  had  to  draw  up  by  mutual  agree- 
ment an  instrument,  called  "Regulation  Charter,"  which exactiy 
determined  the  lands  to  be  ceded  by  the  landlords,  and  the  annual 
payment,  in  money  or  labor,  to  be  eflfected  by  the  peasants  for 
the  same.  These  things  were  to  be  arranged,  as  much  as  possi- 
ble, amicably ;  but  as  the  clashing  of  interests,  and,  still  more, 
the  peasants'  distrust,  gave  littie  hope  of  such  a  solution,  the 
decision,  in  case  of  conflict,  was  left  to  certain  magistrates  created 
on  purpose,  under  the  title  of  Arbiters  of  Peace.  During  the 
first  years,  men  the  most  independent  and  superior,  such  as  Prince 
Tcherk^ky,  Ydri  Samdrin,  and  others,  made  it  a  point  to  take 
on  themselves  these  wearisome  and  delicate  duties.  These  judges, 
elected  by  the  nobility,  were  commissioned  to  approve  the  con- 
tracts for  both  sides,  and,  if  need  were,  to  settie  the  diflSiculties, 
subject  to  ratification  by  a  provincial  court.  One  would  think 
that  these  arbiters,  appointed  by  the  landlords  out  of  their  own 

436 


THE  PEASANT  AND    THE  EMANCIPATION.  437 

ranks,  would  have  been  inclined  to  favor  those  of  their  own 
class.  Nothing  of  the  kind.  By  a  phenomenon  which  does  honor 
to  the  Russian  nobility,  and  which  can  be,  in  part,  accounted  for 
by  the  generosity  and  sensitiveness  of  the  national  character, 
these  men,  the  chosen  of  the  landlords,  of  whom  the  majority 
were  opposed  to  endowing  the  serfs  with  lands,  took  their  mission 
so  earnestly  to  heart,  that  they  quite  frequently  laid  themselves 
open  to  the  accusation  of  taking  the  peasants'  side.*  Unfortunately 
for  the  latter,  these  first  arbiters,  who  represented  the  more  noble- 
minded  portion  of  the  nobility,  were  succeeded  by  men  of  a  very 
diflferent  type,  who  felt  no  scruples  in  sacrificing  the  peasants' 
interests  and  in  applying  the  local  regulations  in  a  spirit  opposed 
to  the  legislator's  intentions. 

The  Regulation  Charters  once  drawn  up  (and  nearly  all — 
110,000  to  112,000 — were  ready  within  the  prescribed  time),  the 
peasants,  now  free  and  placed  in  possession  of  their  lands,  still 
owed  the  landlord  perpetual  rent  in  money  or  in  labor.  All  the 
difference  was  that,  since  1863,  these  dues  were  freely  discussed 
by  the  contracting  parties  or  legally  fixed  by  the  local  regulations. 
Such  a  state  of  things  too  closely  resembled  serfdom  itself  to  be 
regarded  as  anything  more  than  temporary.  The  tenants  sub- 
jected to  it  were  designated  as  being  "  under  temporary  obliga- 
tions." These  peasants  had  only,  as  it  were,  traversed  the  first 
phase  of  emancipation ;  they  were  in  an  intermediate  position 
between  freedom  and  serfdom. 

Then  came  a  second  operation,  more  complicated,  more  pro- 

*  "The  '  arbiters  of  peace,'  themselves  nobles,  even  the  members  of  the 
former  'provincial  committees,'  have  become  completely  transformed  by 
their  new  duties"  (wrote  Samdrin  to  Milidtin  in  August,  1862) ;  "in  entering 
on  them  they  have  not  only  cast  from  them,  but  quickly  forgotten,  all  the 
past.  The  desire  to  conquer  popularity  among  the  masses  has  so  entirely 
triumphed  over  their  former  sentiments,  that  the  '  peace  assemblies '  are 
flooded  with  complaints  from  landlords  against  the  '  arbiters  of  peace,'  on 
account  of  their  partiality  towards  the  peasants,  whereas  there  is  scarcely 
an  instance  of  the  peasants  accusing  them  of  partiality  towards  the  land- 
lords." 


43^      THE  EMPIRE   OF   THE   TSARS  AND    THE  RUSSIANS 

tracted,  which  Alexander  II.  was  to  leave  unfinished :  the 
"redemption,"  which  put  an  end  to  the  obligatory  territorial 
relations  between  the  two  classes.  This  question  did  not  bear  on 
the  serfs'  personal  liberty — ^the  nobility  never  claimed  any  indem- 
nity for  that — ^but  on  the  lands  allotted  to  them,  or  rather  in  the 
rents  which,  in  force  of  the  Statute  and  the  local  charters,  bur- 
dened those  lands.  The  Redemption  Act  made  the  peasants  full 
owners  of  them ;  it  freed  them  from  all  dues  and  obligations 
towards  their  former  masters. 

But  the  law  had  regulated  neither  the  mode  nor  the  time 
of  redemption ;  it  was  left  to  the  contracting  parties  to  take  up 
that  question,  to  fix  the  conditions  and  the  time  of  the  operation. 
Exceptions  were  made  only  for  the  western — former  I^ithuano- 
Polish — provinces,  where  the  government,  immediately  after  the 
rising  of  1863  and  for  political  reasons,  declared  redemption  obliga- 
tory. In  Russia  proper,  the  State  did  not  interfere  in  the  matter 
until  Alexander  III.  came  to  the  throne,  except  by  rendering 
financial  aid. 

This  operation,  if  left  to  the  peasants'  unaided  means,  would 
have  presented  numerous  difl&culties,  both  for  them  and  the  mas- 
ters. It  might  have  lasted  centuries  and  not  have  been  completed 
then.  The  State,  therefore,  whenever  requested  by  the  freedmen, 
advanced  to  them  the  necessary  sum,  or  rather  four  fifths  of  that 
sum,  calculated  at  the  capitalization  rate  of  the  dues  with  which 
each  given  piece  of  land  was  burdened.* 

To  the  landlord,  this  system  offered  the  immense  advantage 
of  converting  a  private  debt  on  the  peasant  into  a  public  debt  on 
the  State,  and  the  freedman's  annual  dues  into  a  sort  of  temporary 

*  The  redemption  price,  as  a  rule,  was  calculated  not  after  the  marked 
value  of  the  land,  but  after  the  sum-total  of  the  obrdk  paid  by  the  former 
serfs  for  the  lands  ceded  to  them  by  the  "  Regulation  Charters."  The  legal 
redemption  rate  was  established  by  capitalizing  at  6  per  cent  the  dues  paid 
in  species — in  other  words,  by  multiplying  the  latter  by  16%.  Hence  it  is 
that  the  redemption  rate  is  frequently  quite  independent  of  the  real  value 
of  the  soil, — sometimes  higher,  sometimes  lower. 


THE  PEASANT  AND    THE  EMANCIPATION.  439 

tax,  the  collection  of  which  is  ensured  by  the  fiscal  agents.  As 
to  the  peasant,  his  gain  was  that  he  became  without  fturther  delay 
full  owner  of  the  soil,  and  could  break  ofi"  at  once  the  obligations 
which  still  bound  him  to  his  former  master.  The  State,  for  their 
mutual  interests,  has,  as  it  were,  constituted  itself  banker  for  both 
parties. 

In  proffering  its  aid  to  the  peasants,  the  State  was  naturally 
entitled  to  determine  in  what  measure  and  on  what  conditions  it 
would  grant  it.  In  order  not  to  become  engaged  too  deeply,  it  had, 
of  course,  to  fix  limits  to  the  financial  assistance  it  was  willing  to 
render.  Such,  according  to  Milidtin,  is  the  true  meaning  of  the 
ofl&cial  valuations  inserted  in  the  Regulation.  By  fixing  before- 
hand, according  to  the  regions  and  to  circumstances,  the  figure  of 
the  capital  which  the  State  was  willing  to  advance,  the  legislator 
intended  to  mark  the  limits  within  which  the  public  credit  might 
be  pledged. 

Some  such  precaution  was  imperative,  and  this  necessity  has 
too  often  been  lost  sight  of  by  those  who  criticised  the  valuations, 
some  as  being  inadequate  to  compensate  the  landlords,  others  as 
being  too  onerous  for  the  peasants.  Both  sides  were  free  to  con- 
tract other  agreements ;  only  in  that  case  the  peasant  was  not  to 
count  on  assistance  from  the  State.* 

The  advances  made  by  the  government  to  the  freedmen  are  to 
be  reimbursed  in  the  course  of  forty-nine  years  at  6  per  cent.  ; 
the  rate  of  6  per  cent,  annual  payment  covers  the  interest  and 
extinguishes  the  debt.  Anticipatory  payments  are  permitted,  but 
of  course  rarely  occur.  Thus,  in  half  a  century,  with  the  govern- 
ment's aid,  the  peasant  will  be  finally  liberated  and  the  gigantic 
operation  finally  closed,  f    Only  in  the  course  of  the  twentieth 

*  Such  free  contracts  have  been  very  rare. 

t  These  forty-nine  years,  moreover,  are  to  be  counted,  not  from  the 
promulgation  of  the  Emancipation  Act,  but  from  the  moment  when  the 
contracting  parties  determine  to  avail  themselves  of  the  facilities  for 
redemption  offered  by  the  State.  Now  not  a  few  peasants  had  not  yet 
decided  on  this  step  when  Alexander  III.  came  to  the  throne. 


440     THE  EMPIRE   OF   THE    TSARS  AND    THE  RUSSIANS. 

century,  then,  the  peasant,  freed  from  all  temporary  dues  to  his 
former  master  and  the  State,  will  have  become  frill  owner  of  the 
piece  of  land  allotted  to  him,  and  will  be  able  to  realize  all  the 
benefits  of  emancipation. 

This  feature  of  the  great  reform  —  the  redemption  of  the  lands 
— turned  it  into  a  vast  credit  operation,  which,  being  undertaken 
immediately  after  the  Crimean  war,  might  be  styled  daring.  The 
government  could  not  hand  over  in  cash  to  the  landlords  the 
amount  of  the  debt  which  it  undertook  to  dear  in  the  tenants' 
name.  Two  new  titles  or  bonds,  therefore,  were  created  to  meet 
this  demand,  both  interest-bearing  and  guaranteed  by  the  State : 
one  ' '  to  bearer,  ' '  bringing  5  per  cent,  interest  and  negotiable  on 
'Change;  the  other  at  5^  per  cent.,  bearing  the  holder's  name  and 
subject,  with  a  view  to  prevent  crowding  the  market,  to  complicated 
formalities  in  case  of  transfer ;  these  bonds  were  subsequently  and 
successively  converted,  by  means  of  lottery-drawing,  into  titles 
"  to  bearer,  "  extinguishable  within  thirty-seven  years.*  It  is  im- 
possible to  enter  here  into  all  the  details  of  this  vast  and  complicated 
operation,  materially  assisted  by  the  forced  course  imposed  by  the 
Russian  government,  with  the  assistance  which  such  a  course  af- 
fords, but  also  liable  to  all  the  risks  which  it  entails  on  financial  en- 
terprise. The  most  crjdng  need  of  the  noble  landholders,  deprived 
of  their  human  capital,  was  for  capital  in  money.  To  help  them  out, 
the  redemption  indemnity  should  have  been  immediately  realiza- 
ble, and  the  paper  issued  by  the  government  was  not,  or  only  on 
onerous  conditions.     As  the  holders  of  the  new  bonds  were  pressed 

*  The  reader  will  note  that  the  bonds  placed  in  the  landlords'  hands 
were  to  be  extinguished  in  thirty-seven  years,  whereas  the  redemption 
annuities,  paid  by  the  peasants  and  meant  to  reimburse  the  government, 
are  distributed  over  forty-nine  years.  The  peasants  were  expected  to 
fall  behind  with  their  payments,  and  that  is  why  the  two  operations,  though 
connected  with  each  other,  were  timed  diflferently.  These  arrears,  as  antici- 
pated, have  been  considerable ;  still,  they  remained  below  the  expecta- 
tions ;  payments  have  even  sometimes  been  anticipated,  so  that  instead  of 
involving  the  state  in  debt,  the  redemption  operation  broaght  in  a  bonus  of 
several  million  roubles. 


THE  PEASANT  AND    THE  EMANCIPATION.  44I 

for  money  all  at  the  same  time,  the  money  market  was  glutted  with 
them,  and  a  depreciation  ensued  which  the  government's  precau- 
tionary measures  could  but  imperfectly  forestall.  This  was  one  of 
the  chief  causes  of  the  pecuniary  straits,  sometimes  amounting 
almost  to  want,  which  the  emancipation  brought  on  numbers  of 
landlords.  What  is  really  wonderful  is  that  such  a  transformation 
should  not  have  determined  a  radical  economic  crisis  ;  that  Russia, 
already  laboring  under  financial  perturbations,  should  have  come 
out  of  this  one  as  unscathed  as  she  did.  When  Alexander  III. 
came  to  the  throne,  the  advances  disbursed  by  the  government 
amounted  to  something  like  750,000,000  roubles,  and  it  is  remark- 
able that  the  State  should  have  been  able  to  open  such  a  credit  to 
the  peasants  without  embarrassment  or  loss  to  the  exchequer.*  If 
the  operation  were  ended,  if  all  the  peasants  had  taken  advantage 
of  the  government's  assistance  and  redeemed  all  the  land  they  were 
entitled  to  by  law,  the  advances  made  by  the  State  would  have 
risen  to  over  one  milliard  roubles.  As  it  is,  they  amounted  to 
862,000,000  on  the  ist  of  June,  1886. 

A  few  figures  will  make  plain  the  state  of  the  operation  at  the 
time  of  the  death  of  Alexander  II.  On  the  first  of  January,  1881, 
there  still  remained,  in  the  thirty-seven  governments  of  the 
interior,  1,553,000  "revision  souls,  "  f  or  more  than  three  mil- 
lions of  peasants  "under  temporary  obligations,  "  i.  e.  such 
as  still  owed  their  former  masters,  for  a  time,  either  labor  or 
obrbk.     The  number  of  serfs  having  proceeded  to  the  redemption 

*  The  metallic  rouble  is  worth  4  francs  or  80  cents.  During  the  years 
that  preceded  the  Bulgarian  war,  it  was  near  on  3>^  francs,  and  in  1889  it 
was  quoted  at  about  2%.  On  the  ist  of  April,  1880,  the  total  of  loans  made 
amounted  to  739,000,000;  the  annuities  collected  under  this  head  in  1879 
reached  43,000,000,  to  which  should  be  added  arrears  to  the  amount  of 
17,000,000.  The  Russian  Bank  had,  on  an  average,  advanced  31^  roubles 
on  the  dessiatlna  (20  dollars  on  each  2f  acres,  approximately),  and  107 
roubles  or  thereabouts  (about  60  dollars),  per  male  peasant. 

t  As  in  the  times  of  serfdom,  the  male  peasant  alone  is  understood  under 
the  term  "soul"  {dushh);  he  alone  paid  poll-tax,  and  the  increase  of 
population  from  one  "  revision  "  (census)  to  another  was  not  taken  into 
consideration. 


442       THE  EMPIRE   OF   THE    TSARS  AND    THE  RUSSIANS. 

of  their  lands  was  5,75o,<xx>  "souls."  Of  these  5,100,000 
had  availed  themselves  of  the  government's  aid ;  about  645,000 
had  not.  To  these  figures  we  must  add  2,700,000  "souls  "  for  the 
nine  western  provinces,  where,  as  a  consequence  of  the  Polish 
insurrection,  the  bonds  of  serfdom  had  been  abruptly  snapped 
and  immediate  redemption  made  compulsory.  This  gives  us, 
for  these  forty-nine  governments,  which  comprised  the  immense 
majority  of  serfs,  over  eight  millions  of  "revision  souls,"  or 
about  twenty  millions  of  persons,  finally  delivered  from  bondage, 
and  having  in  future  only  to  serve  the  interest  on  the  redemption 
loan.  The  operation  was  conducted  on  the  same  principles  in  the 
rest  of  the  empire,  even  to  the  remotest  provinces,  such  as,  for 
instance,  the  Caucasus. 

During  the  last  years  of  Alexander  II,  there  was  a  noticeable 
slackening  in  the  redemption  operations.  The  number  of  peasants 
who  had  recourse  to  them  had  steadily  decreased  since  1873 : 
there  were  not  20,000  in  1880.  The  final  cessation  of  "  temporary 
obligations ' '  seemed,  in  consequence,  about  to  be  delayed  some 
fifteen  or  twenty  years  more,  and  the  forms  of  serfdom  threatened 
to  survive  in  places  into  the  twentieth  century. 

Contrary  to  generally  received  ideas,  there  were,  at  the  acces- 
sion of  Alexander  III.,  numerous  peasants  who,  by  force  of  the 
Statute  itself,  still  remained  in  a  state  of  legal  dependence  from  the 
nobility.  In  1882  over  three  million  peasants  of  both  sexes  still 
were  under  their  former  masters'  tutelage  and,  in  plain  words,  in  a 
state  of  semi-servitude,  since  the  prerogatives  conceded  to  the 
landlords  by  the  law  were  very  extensive.  The  article  148  of  the 
agrarian  statute  appointed  the  former  master  the  natural  trustee 
for  such  communes  as  still  were  "  under  temporary  obligations" 
to  him  ;  article  149  invested  him  with  the  police  supervision  on 
the  domain  and  the  duty  of  protecting  public  safety  ;  he  could  de- 
mand of  the  commune  the  arrest  of  guilty  or  suspected  peasants. 
Article  160  went  the  length  of  awarding  to  the  noble  landlord  the 
right  of  revising  the  communal  resolutions  and  suspending  their 


THE  PEASANT  AND    THE  EMANCIPATION.  443 

execution.  More  than  that,  the  landlord  had,  in  certain  cases, 
the  right  of  demanding  the  destitution  of  the  ' '  elder ' '  {itarshind.') 
or  elective  head  of  the  commune,  and  the  appointment  of  another, 
and  even  of  authorizing  or  forbidding  the  temporary  absence  of 
any  member  of  the  commune.  It  is  easy  to  see  how  abnormal 
such  a  state  of  things  was  twenty  years  after  the  emancipation. 
In  order  to  become  really  free,  these  peasants,  in  the  words  of  a 
St.  Petersburgh  journalist,  needed  another  emancipation. 

This  second  emancipation  had  been  foreseen  and  prepared  by 
the  law ;  it  was  being  gradually  accomplished  by  the  redemption 
which  freed  the  liberated  serfs  from  all  obligations  towards  their 
late  masters.  Unfortunately,  this  great  measure  was  carried  out 
unevenly  in  the  various  provinces.  I^andlords  and  peasants  were 
far  from  showing  everywhere  the  same  zeal  in  settling  accoimts. 
In  the  government  of  Kursk,  for  instance,  scarcely  one  half  of  the 
peasants,  in  those  of  Nijni,  Tdla,  Ori51,  Xstrakhan,  not  over  two 
thirds,  had  begun  operations  in  i88o.  In  the  eight  governments 
which  compose  the  agricultural  zone  of  the  centre,  i.  e.,  in  the 
richest  region  of  the  empire,  over  twenty-five  per  cent,  of  the 
emancipated  serfs,  i.  e.,  1,500,000  peasants  of  both  sexes,  were 
still  ' '  under  temporary  obligations  ' '  at  the  same  date.  Whereas 
in  other  governments  —  those  of  Vi^tka,  Orenburg,  Kharkof, 
Khers5n — the  operation  was  very  nearly  completed.  The  cause 
of  these  fluctuations  lies  in  the  diversity  of  the  conditions  laid 
down  for  the  redemption  in  different  regions. 

In  the  more  fertile  regions  of  the  Black  Mould  belt,  where, 
owing  to  the  outlets  opened  by  the  railroads,  the  value  of  land 
has  rapidly  increased,  the  landlords  frequently  found  it  to  their 
advantage  not  to  consent  to  its  redemption,  so  as  to  retain  the 
compulsory  services  of  the  peasants.  Now  the  Statute  did  not 
give  the  peasant  the  right  to  demand  the  redemption  ;  this  right 
belonged  exclusively  to  the  master,  and  all  that  the  peasants  could 
do  in  such  a  case  was  to  reduce  their  lots  to  the  legal  minimum 
allowed  for  that  particular  locality.     Such  a  law  easily  accounts 


444      ^^^  EMPIRE  OF  THE   TSARS  AND    THE  RUSSIANS. 

for  the  slackening  of  the  operation  in  the  course  of  these  last  years. 
In  order  to  put  an  end  to  this  anomaly  and  to  hasten  the  comple- 
tion of  this  gigantic  liquidation,  Alexander  III.  issued  an  ukhz 
making  redemption  obligatory.  Thus  to  the  son  belongs  the 
honor  of  finishing  the  father's  work. 

Strange  to  say,  scarcely  two  fifths  of  the  redemption  operations 
were  undertaken  by  mutual  consent.  In  over  sixty  cases  out  of 
each  hundred,  the  demand  came  jfrom  the  landlords  or  fi-om  the 
credit  institutions  where  their  estates  were  mortgaged.  The 
peasant's  distrust  partly  accounts  for  this,  and  his  reluctance  to 
pay  for  a  field  to  which  he  considered  himself  entitled  ;  but  this  is 
not  the  only,  nor  even  the  chief  reason.  The  law  itself  indirectly 
encouraged  him  in  his  passive  resistance.  For  the  Statute,  indeed, 
authorized  the  landlord  to  demand  the  pecuniary  settlement  with 
his  tenants  ;  but  in  this  case  he  was  bound  to  content  himself 
with  the  sums  advanced  by  the  State,  i.  e. ,  with  only  four  fifths 
of  the  price  established  by  official  valuation  ;  the  law  forbade  him 
from  claiming  any  more. 

It  was  therefore  manifestly  in  the  peasants'  interests  to  have 
the  redemption  forced  upon  them,  since  in  this  way  they  secured 
a  reduction  in  the  price.  The  official  valuations  being  based  on 
the  capitalization  of  the  dues,  they  found  themselves  pledged  to 
the  payment  of  less  onerous  annuities,  even  while  they  gained  full 
ownership  of  the  lands.*  This  was,  in  fact,  what  the  sovereign 
and  the  members  of  the  Drafting  Commission  aimed  at.  Every- 
thing in  this  operation  seems  intended  to  benefit  the  freedmen, 
yet  these  same  peasants,  apparently  so  favored,  are  frequently  the 

*  One  illustration  will  make  the  matter  plainer.  Certain  peasants  paid 
to  their  former  lord,  as  laid  down  in  the  Regulation  Charters,  a  yearly 
due  of  seven  and  a  half  roubles.  The  rate  of  redemption  for  this  due,  based 
on  the  capitalization  at  six  per  cent.,  was  125  roubles.  But  of  this  sum  the 
peasants,  being  constrained  by  the  landlord  to  redeem,  had  actually  to  pay 
only  four  fifths,  or  100  roubles,  that  being  the  amount  advanced  by  the 
State ;  and  for  this  advance  they  pay  the  State  only  six  per  cent,  interest, 
which  includes  the  extinguishment  of  the  debt, — that  is  to  say,  six  roubles 
a  year  instead  of  seven. 


THE  PEASANT  AND   THE  EMANCIPATION.  445 

most  dissatisfied.  The  reason  is  simple  :  the  valuations  of  redemp- 
tion rates  being  based  on  the  figure  of  the  annual  dues,  and  not 
on  the  actual  value  of  the  soil,  the  land,  thus  ceded  apparently  at 
reduced  prices,  is  frequently  far  from  having  in  reality  the  value 
which  the  freedmen  have  to  pay  for  it.  That  is  why  numbers  of 
them,  on  being  forced  to  redeem,  availed  themselves  of  their  right 
of  acquiring  only  the  legal  minimum. 

Compulsory  redemption  is  prevalent  in  the  north  :  governments 
of  Petersburgh,  Nbvgorod,  Pskof,  Tver,  Smolensk,  Moscow, — 
and  in  the  less  fertile  regions  generally.  Redemption  by  mutual 
agreement  obtains  chiefly  in  the  south  :  governments  of  Poltdva, 
Tchemigof,  Kh^rkof,  Khers6n,  and  in  the  rich  Black  Mould 
regions  generally.  In  the  north,  the  soil  being  unproductive 
and  the  redemption  rates,  based  on  the  annual  dues  formerly 
paid,  comparatively  high,  it  was  entirely  in  the  master's  interest 
to  get  out  of  his  tenants  whatever  the  law  empowered  him  to 
demand.  In  the  south,  the  soil  generally  being  remarkably 
fertile  and,  owing  to  the  railroads,  steadily  rising  in  value,  the 
landlord  was  by  no  means  anxious  to  give  it  up  at  the  legal  rate, 
which,  as  a  rule,  fell  far  short  of  its  actual  value.* 

It  is  plain  jfrom  this  that  the  emancipation,  even  while  con- 
ducted everywhere  after  identical  rules,  could  not  everywhere 
produce  the  same  effects,  but  must  have  overburdened  at  times 
the  landlord,  at  others  the  peasants.  That,  partly,  explains  the 
difference  in  the  judgments  pronounced  in  Russia  itself  on  the 
great  reform.  Of  the  noble  landholders,  the  least  wealthy  came 
off  worst.  The  State  was  forced  to  come  to  the  aid  of  such  among 
them  who,  owning  only  a  few  serfs,  whose  labor  they  rented  out, 

*  The  reports  of  tlie  agricaltural  inquest  commissions  show  that  the 
redemption  rates,  as  fixed  in  1861,  were,  in  the  northern  portions  of  the 
Black  Motild  belt  and  in  some  western  localities,  ten,  thirty,  fifty,  and  some- 
times a  hundred  per  cent,  below  the  actual  market  value  of  the  land.  In 
the  northwest,  the  north,  and  the  east,  on  the  contrary,  it  was  as  much 
above  the  current  prices.  It  appears  that  there  were  only  nine  governments 
in  which  the  difference  one  way  or  the  other  did  not  amount  to  more  than 
ten  per  cent. 


446      THE  EMPIRE  OF  THE    TSARS  AND    THE  RUSSIANS. 

found  themselves  on  the  verge  of  total  ruin.  Among  the  freed- 
men,  no  given  class  had  any  claim  on  indemnities  or  assistance  ; 
but  the  State  had  to  help  out  some  indirectly  by  remitting  them 
part  of  their  tax  arrears.  This  v^ras  done,  among  others,  in  the 
government  of  Smolensk,  where  the  price  charged  for  the  land  is 
out  of  all  proportion  with  its  producing  capacities,  and  where  the 
lot  which  the  peasant  has  been  compelled  to  redeem  is  notoriously 
insufficient  to  cover  his  taxes  and  dues.* 

Where  the  conditions  were  most  favorable  to  them,  the 
peasants  did  not  always  know  how  to  avail  themselves  of  the 
advantages  proffered  them.  They  showed  a  repugnance  for  this 
operation,  which  could  be  accounted  for  only  by  their  prejudices 
and  their  distrust.  "  Why,"  they  objected,  "  should  we  redeem 
land  that  belongs  to  us?  "  Many  saw  there  a  trap  and  got  it 
into  their  heads  that  the  land  was  to  be  made  over  to  them  some 
day  unconditionally,  wherefore  redemption,  they  reasoned,  was 
all  profit  to  the  master.  In  a  certain  village,  situated  in  one  of 
the  richest  Black  Mould  governments,  a  great  landlord — an 
upright  and  liberal  man,  tried  to  make  his  peasants  understand 
that  it  was  in  their  interest  to  redeem  the  maximum  allowed  them 
by  the  local  regulation.  His  insistence  only  increased  their  dis- 
trust, and  his  proposals  were  repulsed  by  the  commune  after  long 
debates.  For  the  decision  in  such  cases  must  be  passed  by  the 
commune  as  a  body,  that  being  an  engagement  which  involves 
the  solidarity  of  all  the  peasants.  In  the  communal  assembly  of 
this  particular  village,  then,  those  who  were  inclined  to  follow 
the  landlord's  advice,  and  opined  for  immediate  redemption  and 
the  legal  maximum,  were  accused  of  siding  with  the  master.  The 
others  pulled  their  beards  and  abused  them  :  "  You  are  nothing 
but  serfs  ;  you  are  the  bdrMs  men ;  you  don't  know  what  it 
means  to  be  free."  They  meant  that  the  land  would  be  coming 
to  them  of  itself  by  and  by,  along  with  their  liberty. 

*  Some  ten  million  roubles,  taken  from  the  treasury  funds  and  in  great 
part  distributed  through  the  provincial  nobiliary  assemblies,  were  devoted 
to  this  use. 


THE  PEASANT  AND    THE  EMANCIPATION.  447 

Numbers  of  communes  acted  in  the  same  manner  under  like 
circumstances.  Such  facts  show  that  the  law-makers  had  their 
good  and  sufficient  reasons  when  they  imposed  on  the  peasants 
the  obligation  of  redeeming  a  minimum  of  land.  Had  the  land- 
lords not  been  empowered  to  force  them  to  it,  they  would  have 
been  waiting  forever  for  gratuitous  possession  and  never  have 
come  to  any  understanding  at  all.  So  in  the  village  just  men- 
tioned, the  peasants  now  have  only  two  or  three  dessiatinas  (six 
to  eight  acres)  per  ' '  soul, ' '  whereas,  by  accepting  the  legal  maxi- 
mum, they  would  have  had  more  than  double  as  much.  The 
lands  which  they  refused  to  redeem,  they  now  rent  from  the 
landlord,  at  a  rate  very  little  below  that  of  the  redemption 
annuities.  By  paying  a  few  copecks  more  for  the  next  forty-nine 
years,  they  would  have  become  proprietors  instead  of  remaining 
tenants.  That  is  a  point  that  many  peasants  never  took  in,  or — 
their  courage  failed  them,  being  filled  with  chimerical  hopes,  and 
more  alive  to  the  burdens  of  the  present  than  to  the  fair  promise 
of  the  future. 

Into  the  statute  which  regtdates  all  the  details  of  this  immense 
liquidation,  somehow  crept  a  certain  "Article  123,"  which  rose  to 
great  importance  during  the  first  years  of  the  emancipation,  owing 
to  the  peasants'  improvidence.  In  virtue  of  this  article,  the  land- 
lord could,  instead  of  selling  to  his  tenants  the  quantity  of  land 
stipulated  by  the  local  regulation,  and  with  their  agreement,  free 
himself  from  this  obligation  by  giving  up  to  them  gratuitously 
one  fourth  of  the  legal  maximum.  This  article  123,  nicknamed 
from  its  inventor,  "  Gagdrin  article,"  appears  not  to  have  been 
much  to  the  taste  of  Milidtin,  Tcherk^sky,  Samdrin,  and  others 
of  their  stamp, — in  other  words,  of  the  peasants'  more  ardent 
champions  in  the  Drafting  Commission.  Owing  to  the  ignorance 
of  the  former  serfs,  this  clause  was,  at  first,  in  great  favor  with 
them,  but,  of  course,  caused  much  disappointment  later  on.  In 
the  rich  Black  Mould  regions,  where  the  soil  in  most  cases  rapidly 
rose  to  a  value  far  beyond  the  legal  redemption  rates,  the  tenants, 
who  had  everything  to  lose  by  this  combination,  ofttimes  hailed 


448       THE  EMPIRE   OF   THE    TSARS  AND   THE  RUSSIANS. 

it  with  joy,  and  even  insisted  on  its  being  carried  out,  glad  to  be 
delivered  from  the  burden  of  the  dues  and  secretly  cherishing  a 
vague  hope  of  a  new  and  gratuitous  distribution. 

Another  noteworthy  trait  :  one  of  the  things  that  confirmed 
the  hankering  of  many  peasants  after  this  gratuitous  ' '  quarter  lot,  * ' 
was  the  repugnance  with  which  it  was  at  first  regarded  by  most 
landlords,  too  shortsighted  to  understand  from  the  first  that  it 
could  be  to  their  advantage  to  sacrifice  their  indemnity  in  view  of 
the  probable  rise  of  ground-rent.  Experience  soon  opened  the 
peasants'  eyes  ;  most  contracts  of  the  kind  are  dated  from  the  first 
two  or  three  years.  The  people  gave  to  this  gratuitous  "  quarter 
lot  "  the  designation  of  "  orphan's  "  or  "  poor  man's  lot,"  and,  as 
a  matter  of  fact,  the  communes  which  have  accepted  it  are  now, 
as  a  rule,  poorer  than  their  neighbors.  *  In  the  rich  Black  Mould 
regions,  where  the  increase  in  value  has  already  taken  place,  the 
peasants  who  have  elected  this  mode  of  settlement  have  before 
this  become  bitterly  aware  of  their  mistake,  f  They  complain 
and  try  to  make  out  that  they  have  been  cheated.  In  a  village 
I  am  personally  acquainted  with  the  women  now  upbraid  the 
men  with  their  improvident  decision  :  "You  are  wretches,"  they 
repeat  to  them;  "thanks  to  you,  our  children  will  always 
be  beggars. ' '     And  to  crown  all,  the  workers  of  disturbances  are 

*  1  just  now  came  across  a  characteristic  page  in  a  letter  of  Ydri  Samdrin  : 
"The  great  popularity,  among  the  peasants,  of  'Article  123,'  which  they 
have  named  'the  orphan's  lot,'  is  accounted  for  principally  by  a  blunder  of 
the  landlords  themselves,  who  generally  opened  the  discussion  by  declaring 
themselves  ready  to  accede  to  anything,  except  '  the  gratuitous  quarter  lot ' 
(Art.  123).  That  was  sufl5cient  for  the  peasant  to  imagine  that  in  that  provi- 
sion lay  perfect  bliss  for  him.  For  myself,  I  announced  that  I  was  willing  to 
agree  to  anything,  without  taking  exception  to  any  article  whatever,  so  I 
had  not  a  single  demand  for  '  the  orphan's  lot.'  " — Letter  to  N.  Miliiitin, 
August,  1862. 

t  It  seems  at  first  sight  as  though  the  642,000  peasants  who,  on  the  ist 
of  January,  1882,  had  accomplished  the  redemption  of  their  lands  without 
assistance  from  the  State,  should  be  accounted  the  most  fortunate  ;  that, 
however,  is  not  the  case  in  reality,  since  they  are  mostly  those  who  had 
been  content  with  the  "  quarter  lot,"  so  that,  practically,  there  had  been  no 
redemption  at  all. 


THE  PEASANT  AND    THE  EMANCIPATION.  449 

trying  to  make  capital  of  this  dissatisfaction  and  the  inequality  in 
the  condition  of  the  dififerent  communes,  brought  about  by  an  act 
of  their  own  free  will,  for  the  revolutionary  propaganda. 

All  the  peasants  are  far  from  having  the  same  cause  for  regrets, 
yet  nearly  all  have  experienced  the  same  feeling  of  disappointment. 
The  best  treated  have  failed  to  find  in  the  longed-for  liberty  the 
wonder-working  fairy  whose  wand  was  to  operate  a  magical  trans- 
formation in  their  izbh.  The  expectations  aroused  in  the  masses 
by  the  very  word  ' '  emancipation  ' '  and  overwrought  by  the  long- 
ings of  centuries,  were  too  lofty,  too  visionary  not  to  shrink  and 
pale  before  reality.  In  the  serf's  dreams  the  image  of  liberty 
took  tints  the  more  glowing,  a  glamour  the  more  radiant,  that  the 
form  of  it  was  so  vague.  The  liberated  peasant  forgets  the  ills  of 
serfdom,  the  unpaid,  compulsory  labor,  the  obrbk ;  he  inclines 
to  see  only  the  present  charges  and  the  vanishing  of  his  dream. 
"  Father,"  said  an  old  woman  in  my  presence,  speaking  of  her 
late  husband,  **  father  saw  a  field  in  a  dream  one  night,  at  the 
time  that  the  manifesto  came  out,  and  said  to  me  in  the  morning  : 
I  know  what  that  means — we  shall  never  be  free. ' '  To  the  old 
crone,  this  word  had  a  profound  meaning  ;  fifteen  years  after,  she 
still  saw  in  it  a  sort  of  prophecy  or  divination.  How  did  she  in- 
terpret the  mysterious  dream  ?  Was  the  field  seen  by  her  hus- 
band a  symbol  of  servitude  in  her  eyes,  or  perhaps  an  emblem  of 
that  prosperity  which  the  peasant  sees  in  his  dreams  but  never 
can  grasp  ?  No  matter,  the  mujik  and  his  bdba  *  understood  each 
other  :  they  should  never  be  fi-ee  !  This  guileless  cry  of  the  heart 
reveals  vague  and  misty  aspirations,  not  unlike  some  of  the  theories 
of  Western  socialism  on  the  bondage  of  the  people,  and  modem 
servitude  generally.  This  is  why  a  writer  of  subtle  mind  gave 
the  advice — ^probably  easier  to  give  than  to  follow  :  to  untie  the 
bonds  of  serfdom  quietly,  to  jfree  the  serfs  ' '  without  ringing  in 
their  ears  that  terrible  word  Liberty,  for  the  true  meaning  of 
which  Western  Europe  has  been  seeking  through  centuries." 
*Bdba,  woman,  especially  old  woman ;  babka,b&bushka — ^grandmother. 

89 


BOOK  VII.     CHAPTER  IV. 

Results  of  the  Emancipation — How  the  Manners  and  Social  Statns  were 
less  Affected  by  it  than  was  Expected  by  either  Adversaries  or  Par- 
tisans— Disappointments  and  their  Causes — Economic  Results — ^They 
Dififer  according  to  the  Regions — How  it  is  that  the  Conditions  of  the 
Master's  Existence  have  been  Modi6ed  by  the  Emancipation,  on  the 
Whole,  more  than  the  Peasant's — Moral  and  Social  Consequences. 

It  was  not  only  in  the  izbd.  that  the  emancipation  left  an 
tindercurrent  of  dissatisfaction.  This  revolution,  which  struck  at 
the  very  bases  of  society  and  property,  which,  in  the  opinion  of 
statesmen,  was  likely  to  imperil  the  entire  social  order,  was 
accomplished  peaceably,  with  hardly  any  disturbance.  It  was  a 
great  success  ;  yet,  to  many  of  those  who  took  part  in  the  work, 
it  proved  disappointing. 

At  the  two  extremes  of  the  civilized  world — in  Russia  and  in 
the  United  States  of  America — two  tasks  of  similar  import  were 
achieved  at  nearly  the  same  moment,  although  by  very  diflFerent 
means.  In  America,  the  liberation  of  the  slaves,  bought  at 
the  price  of  a  murderous  war  and  carried  out  by  force,  without 
umpires  or  mediating  power,  has  temporarily  cast  the  white 
master  at  the  feet  of  the  colored  freedman,  and  established  on  the 
shores  of  the  Gulf  of  Mexico  a  state  of  things  as  saddening,  as 
perilous,  as  slavery  itself.  In  Russia,  on  the  other  hand,  the 
same  event  has  brought  about  no  class  strife  ;  as  for  race  strife, 
there  could  be  none ;  it  has  bred  neither  animosity  nor  rivalry ; 
the  social  peace  was  not  disturbed.  And  yet,  of  the  two  countries, 
the  best  satisfied  with  its  own  work  possibly  is  not  the  Empire  of 
the  North. 

450 


THE  PEASANT  AND    THE  EMANCIPATION.  45 1 

How  is  this  seemiilg  anomaly  to  be  explained  ?  First  of  all 
by  the  excessive  hopes  raised — a  feeling  which,  with  the  Russian, 
beyond  every  other  people,  is  apt  to  overleap  reality  ;  then  by  the 
passionate  longing  of  desire,  of  which  the  joy  of  possession  always 
falls  short.  Not  less  than  the  ignorant  serf,  the  politician  and 
the  literary  man,  private  speculation  and  public  opinion,  had 
built  up  illusions.  The  cultivated  Russians  had  conjured  up  a 
vision  of  an  Eden  very  nearly  as  fanciful  as  the  Eldorado  of  the 
peasant's  dreams  :  of  a  free  Russia,  all  new,  all  different  from  the 
Russia  of  serfdom.  In  reality,  the  change  neither  was  effected  as 
rapidly,  nor  reached  as  deep  as  was  expected ;  there  was  no 
sudden  transformation  scene.  And  so,  many  choice  spirits  gave 
way  to  disenchantment,  depression,  discouragement.  This  is  a 
point  that  should  never  be  lost  sight  of :  the  emancipation  and  all 
the  great  reforms  which  accompanied  or  followed  it  have  not 
brought  about,  in  manners,  social  relations,  in  the  national  life, 
all  the  changes  which  both  its  adversaries  and  partisans  had 
augured  from  it.  The  consequences,  for  good  or  evil,  have  been 
less  great,  less  visible,  less  striking  than  was  hoped  by  the  ones 
and  feared  by  the  others.  After  so  much  discussing,  after  such 
lofty  flights  of  ambition  and  such  sombre  forebodings,  it  was  a 
surprise  to  both  progressists  and  conservatives  to  find  themselves 
so  nearly  at  the  point  whence  they  started,  to  have  made  so  little 
way.  In  this  respect  Russia  is  not  imlike  a  man  who,  after 
imdergoing  a  dangerous  operation,  does  not  find  himself  as  much 
benefited  by  it  as  he  had  hoped,  and  is  at  once  glad  to  have  come 
out  of  it  alive  and  dissatisfied  at  not  feeling  more  relieved. 

Russia  is  not  the  only  country  that  has  passed  through  such 
painful  and  contrary  impressions.  France,  too,  on  the  eve  and 
on  the  morrow  of  her  revolutions,  has  known  but  too  well  these 
alternations  of  enthusiasm  and  despondency,  that  moral  collapse 
which  follows  on  mighty  efforts,  after  the  exaltation  of  the 
struggle  has  passed  away.  In  Russia  the  reaction  has  been  the 
greater,  the  disenchantment  the  bitterer,  that  the  country,  being 


452      THE  EMPIRE  OF   THE   TSARS  AND   THE  RUSSIANS. 

younger,  had  the  superb  confidence  of  j'outh  in  its  own  powers. 
It  is  therefore  not  to  be  wondered  at,  if,  long  before  the  assassina- 
tion of  Alexander  II.,  disappointment  showed  on  all  sides,  in 
pubhc  opinion  and  in  the  press  ;  nor  should  too  much  credence  be 
given  to  the  laments  of  fashionable  pessimism,  which,  since  the 
nihilists'  attempts,  has  become  quite  outspoken.  In  the  same 
way  that,  in  France,  the  failure  of  1789  and  the  bankruptcy  of  the 
Revolution  have  been  proclaimed,  the  bankruptcy  of  the  emancipa- 
tion and  the  failure  of  the  reforms  have  been  denoimced  in  Russia. 
Public  opinion,  having  declared  itself  disappointed,  lost  all 
interest — especially  in  the  provinces — in  the  questions  which  had 
roused  it  to  such  a  passionate  pitch  under  Alexander  II.  Such 
hours  of  depression  are  inevitable  in  the  lives  of  nations  ;  to  throw 
all  the  blame  on  the  alleged  fickleness  of  the  Russian  character 
would  be  unfair.  In  all  countries  trees  grow  too  slowly  to  please 
the  hand  that  planted  them,  and  the  eyes  that  watch  them  are 
always  astonished  at  the  tardiness  of  the  fruit. 

Not  content  with  complaining  almost  universally  of  the  slow 
progress  effected  so  far,  many  Russians  proclaim,  as  a  sort  of 
axiom,  that  the  condition  of  the  rural  population  is  worse  than  it  was 
before  the  emancipation.  This  kind  of  paradox  has  almost  become 
a  commonplace,  so  quickly  are  the  woes  and  the  shame  of  serfdom 
forgotten  over  the  sufferings  and  difl&culties  of  the  present  day. 

One  would  naturally  look  for  such  an  opinion  principally  from 
those  men  who,  from  their  education,  their  principles  or  their  age, 
are  all,  the  world  over,  prone  to  laud  the  past.  But  they  are  far 
firom  being  alone  of  this  mind ;  their  cue  is  taken  up  by  pro- 
gressists, the  least  apt  to  shy  at  innovations.  Curiously  enough, 
indeed,  it  is  in  this  latter  camp  that  pessimism  often  stalks  most 
rampantly.  Those  who  denounce  most  vociferously  the  failure 
of  the  19th  of  February  are  not  always  men  who  dread  and  con- 
demn the  principles  proclaimed  on  that  day,  but  more  often  such 
as  are  inclined  to  regard  the  agrarian  laws  of  1861  as  inadequate 
or  incomplete. 


THE  PEASANT  AND    THE  EMANCIPATION.  453 

One  of  the  causes  which  account  for  this  anomaly  and  also,  in 
part,  for  the  general  feeling  of  disappointment  left  by  the  Emanci- 
pation Statute,  is  the  fact  that  the  great  reform  was  not  carried  out 
by  the  same  hands  that  had  so  laboriously  prepared  it.  It  should 
not  be  forgotten  that,  on  the  very  morrow  of  the  day  on  which 
their  agrarian  code  was  solemnly  promulgated,  its  chief  authors, 
together  with  their  leader,  Mililitin,  were  consigned  to  disgrace. 
Whatever  one  may  think  of  their  work  and  their  doctrines,  there 
is  scarcely  a  doubt  but  that,  in  their  hands,  that  work,  in  its  prac- 
tical application,  would  have  been  conducted  more  resolutely, 
logically,  consistently,  than  in  the  hands  of  men  antagonistic  or 
indifferent  to  it. 

One  thing  is  certain,  that  the  same  spirit  did  not  preside  at  the 
drawing  up  of  the  rural  charter  and  at  the  carrying  out  of  it.  This 
initial  reform,  like  most  of  those  that  were  soon  to  follow,  labored 
under  incoherences  and  hesitations, — at  least  in  the  application, — 
also  under  lack  of  conviction  and  lack  of  method. 

The  most  illustrious  among  the  instigators  of  the  Statute  of  the 
19th  of  February  would  have  wished,  as  did  Milititin,  after  observ- 
ing how  it  worked,  to  go  over  again  certain  amendments  which 
had  been  forced  on  the  commission  ;  to  base  the  new  construction 
on  administrative,  economic,  financial  reforms,  which  were  not, 
after  all,  undertaken  in  time  or  not  in  the  same  spirit.  Their 
most  earnest  wish,  it  is  asserted,  was  to  alleviate  the  peasant's 
sufferings,  to  strive  to  lighten  the  burdens  which  crush  him,  to 
seek,  among  other  things,  for  a  way  to  facilitate  the  agrarian 
liquidation  by  means  of  a  systematic  process  of  colonization, 
instead  of  leaving  the  mujik  to  go  forth  at  random  to  look  for  the 
promised  land.  It  may  be  that,  even  had  they  been  allowed  to 
conduct  the  practical  application  of  the  reform  in  their  own  way, 
they  would  not  have  been  able  to  fulfil  all  their  hopes  and  avoid 
all  disappointment.  But  it  is  manifestly  unfair  to  cast  all  the 
blame  for  any  mistakes  or  illusions  from  which  the  great  work 
may  not  have  been  exempt,  on  men  who  were  repeatedly  compelled 


454      7'^-^  EMPIRE   OF   THE    TSARS  AND    THE  RUSSIANS. 

to  introduce  into  it  alterations  opposed  to  their  views,  and  who, 
after  laboriously  drawing  up  and  ordering  into  a  code  most  com- 
plicated laws,  were  commanded  to  entrust  the  practical  application 
of  them  to  other  hands. 

Moreover,  the  work,  though  not  having  yielded  all  that  was 
expected  of  it  by  the  impatience  of  its  promoters,  is  far  from 
having  proved  as  barren  of  results  as  certain  people  would  have 
us  believe.  Politically,  the  eflfects  of  the  emancipation  have  been 
almost  nil :  but  in  all  other  respects  its  consequences  are  num- 
erous and  already  apparent.  It  would  be  difl&cult  to  enumerate 
them  in  a  few  pages.  Still  they  might  be  reduced  under  three 
main  heads :  economic  progress,  owing  to  the  stimulant  applied 
to  production  by  free  labor  and  free  competition  ;  moral  progress, 
owing  to  the  removal  from  the  public  conscience  of  a  long 
standing  stain  and  to  the  new-bom  feeling  of  responsibility  ; 
social  transformation,  owing  to  the  slackening  of  patriarchal 
habits  in  favor  of  individualism. 

The  economic  results  are  perhaps  the  most  difl&cult  to  appraise, 
for  two  reasons  :  ist,  because  property,  agriculture,  and  the  whole 
of  rural  economy  haVe  not  yet  been  rescued  from  the  confusion  and 
uncertainty  inseparable  from  any  epoch  of  transition  ;  2d,  because 
the  eflfects  of  the  emancipation  vary,  for  both  classes  concerned, 
according  to  the  regions,  the  provinces,  the  commimes,  and  indeed, 
as  regards  the  former  masters,  they  vary  according  to  the  charac- 
ter, the  qualities,  good  or  evil,  of  individuals.  The  traveller, 
therefore,  should  not  wonder  at  the  diversity  or  even  contradictori- 
ness  of  the  views  which  he  encounters  on  this  subject,  or  at  the 
complaints  which  he  hears  from  both  landlord  and  freedman, 
since  both  of  necessity  are  temporarily  uncomfortable  and  each 
considers  himself  aggrieved. 

As  a  rule,  the  landlords  have,  at  all  events  dturing  the  first 
years,  lost  a  notable  portion  of  their  income — frequently  as  much 
as  one  third.  In  the  Black  Mould  provinces,  where  the  soil  is 
generous  and  the  population  comparatively  dense,  the  substitution 


THE  PEASANT  AND    THE  EMANCIPATION,  455 

of  free  for  servile  labor  was  not  long  a  matter  of  regret.  In  such 
rich  governments  as  Kursk,  Oridl,  Tamb6f,  Vor6nej,  the  land- 
lord, if  possessed  of  some  capital  and  a  well-ordered  mind,  fre- 
quently drew  from  his  diminished  acres,  at  the  end  of  a  few  years, 
an  income  as  large,  if  not  larger,  as  an  estate  of  double  the  extent 
yielded  in  the  times  of  serfdom.  In  this  favored  region,  where 
new  railroads  have  opened  wide  facilities  to  agriculture,  where 
the  land  has  ofttimes  doubled,  trebled,  quadrupled  in  value,  both 
landlords  and  peasants  have  been  enabled  at  once  to  reap  benefit 
from  the  new  dispensation.* 

Not  such  the  state  of  affairs  in  the  steppes  of  the  south  ;  still 
less  in  the  meagre  regions  of  the  north  and  west.  In  the  steppes, 
where  land  is  plentiful  and  the  population  scarce,  the  suppression 
of  forced  labor  inflicted  on  the  landlords  such  losses  as  could  not 
be  made  good  by  the  redemption  dues.  In  the  thankless  plains  of 
the  north  and  northwest,— Pskof,  Novgorod,  Smolensk,  Tver, — 
where  the  soil  is  niggardly  in  bearing  and  hands  are  scarce,  the 
lands  left  to  the  nobility  are  far  from  bringing  in  what  they  used 
to  bring  when  labor  was  unpaid.  So  great  is  the  difference,  that 
many  landlords,  finding  farming  too  burdensome  and  unremunera- 
tive  a  pursuit,  have  given  it  up,  and  gone  into  the  cities,  there  to 
live  on  state  service,  industry,  or  commerce. 

These  northern  pomiesk-tchiks,  the  most  heavily  stricken  by 
the  expropriation  of  186 1,  are  often  those  who  received  the  highest 
indemnities.  For,  if  the  lands  left  them  have  considerably  gone 
down  in  value,  the  redemption  rates  for  those  which  they  ceded  to 

*  The  rapid  rise  in  the  prices  of  land,  in  the  more  fertile  regions,  is  not 
due  exclusively  to  the  creation  of  railways  ;  it  is  one  of  the  direct  conse- 
quences of  emancipation,  which  frees  the  soil  itself  and  makes  the  owning 
of  land  accessible  to  all  classes  of  the  nation.  It  enabled  tradesmen  and 
other  urban  classes  to  invest  capital  in  land.  Accordingly,  the  reports  of 
the  agricultural  inquest  commission  of  1873  show  that  the  number  of  rural 
landholders  had  trebled  in  the  ten  first  years  after  the  emancipation.  On 
the  other  hand,  there  is  a  proportionate  decrease  in  the  ranks  of  the  noble 
landholders.  Many  pontiish-tchiks,  already  ill  at  ease  in  the  time  of  serf- 
dom, had  now  been  forced  to  liquidate. 


456     THE  EMPIRE   OF  THE    TSARS  AND    THE  RUSSIANS. 

the  peasants  were  calculated  on  a  basis  much  above  their  real 
worth.  So  here  again  the  peasant  is  most  to  be  pitied  of  the  two. 
A  large  proportion  of  the  serfs  of  these  provinces  had  ceased  to 
work  on  their  masters'  estates,  and  were  plying  various  trades  in 
the  cities  or  ^dllages,  paying  the  usual  annual  due  or  obrbk.  To 
avert  complete  ruin  from  the  landlords,  it  became  imperative  to 
compel  these  serfs  to  redeem,  equally  with  the  others,  lots  on 
which,  half  the  time,  they  could  not  make  a  living,  at  rates 
which,  being  based  on  the  figure  of  the  annual  dues  they  had 
paid  from  other  sources,  was  usually  much  higher  than  the  nor- 
mal income  from  the  land — sometimes  than  the  net  income  of  the 
best  years.  For  this  class  of  peasants — and  it  was  a  numerous 
one — ^the  compulsory  redemption  of  the  land  virtually  meant  the 
redemption  of  their  personal  liberty. 

The  Emperor  Alexander  II.,  in  his  address  of  the  27th  of  Jan- 
uary,  1 86 1 ,  while  commanding  the  project  of  emancipation  to  be  laid 
before  him,  informed  the  Coimcil  of  the  Empire  that  * '  the  ftmda- 
mental  object  of  the  entire  work  was  to  be  the  amelioration  of  the 
peasants'  condition,  not  merely  in  words,  but  in  deed."  In  con- 
formity with  these  generous  instructions,  those  who  were  appointed 
to  draw  up  the  charter  calculated  the  rate  of  the  obligatory  re- 
demption in  such  a  manner  as  to  aflford  to  the  peasants  immedi- 
ate relief;  but  they  had  left  out  of  their  calculations  the 
increase  of  taxes  and  contributions  of  every  kind,  to  be  levied  on 
the  state  in  general,  on  the  provinces,  the  communes.  Great  is  the 
number  of  peasants  who,  to-day,  pay  taxes  and  dues  as  heavy  as 
in  the  time  of  serfdom,*  while  they  have  less  land,  less  forest, 
often  less  live  stock,  and  less  credit  than  before  the  emancipation, 

*  All  the  local  administrations  complain  of  the  disproportion  between  the 
direct  taxes  and  the  income  from  the  land,  — a  disproportion  in  consequence 
of  which  the  taxes  really  fall  on  the  personal  labor  of  the  husbandman. 
Not  to  lay  on  too  gloomy  colors,  however,  it  should  be  remembered  that 
one  half  of  the  rural  population — the  peasants  of  the  Crown  demesnes,  are, 
as  a  rule,  much  better  off  than  the  others.  They  have  more  land  and  pay 
less  for  it. 


THE  PEASANT  AND    THE  EMANCIPATION.  457 

which,  under  such  crushing  conditions,  could  not  rapidly  augment 
the  well-being  of  the  people  nor  improve  the  culture  of  the  soil. 
It  has  frequently  enriched  wealthy  districts  and  sometimes  appears 
to  have  still  more  impoverished  poor  ones.  Official  statistics  have 
ascertained  that  in  many  localities  the  cattle  had  diminished  in 
number  ;  hand  in  hand  with  the  lack  of  cattle,  goes  that  of  agri- 
ctdtural  implements  and  of  manure,  so  that  the  peasant's  already 
primitive  mode  of  farming  not  only  has  not  improved,  but  has,  in 
places,  actually  deteriorated  since  he  is  free.  The  soil  has  become 
exhausted,  the  fields  have  even  sometimes  been  abandoned,  so 
that  in  many  regions  bad  crops  and  dearth  have  come  to  be  of 
almost  regular  occurrence. 

In  order  to  compensate  all  these  inequalities,  and  to  distribute 
all  these  burdens  more  evenly  among  the  various  regions,  the 
State  should  have  taken  upon  itself  a  portion,  at  least,  of  the 
redemption  payments,  instead  of  merely  advancing  the  money  to 
the  peasants.  That  in  fact,  and  everything  considered,  would 
have  been  but  just,  for  the  State  itself  and  all  the  classes  of  society, 
especially  the  merchant  class,  to  which  the  reform  opened  the 
access  to  landed  property,  were  interested  in  its  success.  And 
indeed  it  was  in  this  very  manner,  with  the  co-operation  of  the 
State,  that  the  corresponding  process  took  place  in  the  Kingdom 
of  Poland,  a  few  years  later,  under  the  direction  of  Nicolas 
Mililitin,  and  that  is  probably  one  of  the  reasons  why,  notwithstand- 
ing the  harshness  of  the  conditions  imposed  on  the  Polish  nobility, 
the  agrarian  laws  have  perhaps  worked  better  there  than  in  the 
centre  of  the  empire. 

The  Bmperor  Alexander  III.  has  alleviated  the  suiFerings  of 
the  peasants  in  twofold  guise  :  by  revising  the  direct  taxation, 
and  by  reducing  the  redemption  dues.  The  State  has  made  an 
effort  to  equalize  the  burdens  of  the  former  serfs  and  of  the  Crown 
peasants  who  have  been  endowed  with  land  from  the  State 
demesnes  ;  it  has  striven  to  aid  the  portion  of  the  rural  population 
whose    load   was  heaviest.       The  difficulty  lay  in  the  financial 


458      THE  EMPIRE  OF  THE   TSARS  AND   THE  RUSSIANS. 

Straits  of  the  imperial  exchequer.  The  Bulgarian  war,  which 
drew  it  into  unexpected  extra  costs,  to  the  amount  of  one  milliard 
of  roubles,  would,  it  was  feared,  stand  in  the  way,  for  a  long 
time  to  come,  of  any  such  operation.  This  diflSculty  has  not 
arrested  the  Emperor  Alexander  III.  and  his  councillors. 

In  spite  of  the  penury  which  afflicts  the  treasury,  the  imperial 
government  contrived  to  lighten  the  burdens  which  crush  the  Ufe 
out  of  the  rural  populations.  The  Emperor  Alexander  III.,  con- 
stantly preoccupied  with  the  welfare  of  his  faithful  peasants, 
appears  to  have  set  this  task  before  himself  as  his  main  object  in 
life.  Already  towards  the  end  of  his  father's  reign,  the  suppres- 
sion of  the  poll-tax  had  been  spoken  of,  as  well  as  the  expediency 
of  spreading  the  sixty  million  roubles  supplied  by  this  tax  over  all 
classes.  One  of  the  present  emperor's  first  acts  was  to  carry  out 
his  father's  intentions  by  aboUshing  this  tax,  in  use  through  many 
centuries,  the  last  relic  of  serfdom.  This  was  definitely  accom- 
plished in  1886,  and  a  land  tax  substituted,  also  an  income  tax  (on 
incomes  derived  from  other  sources  than  real  estate),  and  a  tax  on 
inheritances.  As  long  ago  as  1880  the  salt  excise  was  suppressed, 
a  tax  which,  though  classed  under  the  head  of  "indirect,"  in 
reality  amounted  to  a  sort  of  poll-tax,  weighing  most  heavily  on 
the  poor. 

As  to  the  reduction  of  the  redemption  dues,  the  government 
of  Alexander  III.  decided  in  favor  of  a  compromise  between  two 
different  systems.  At  first  it  had  been  planned  to  make  use  of  all 
the  resources  that  the  State  could  dispose  of  to  liberate  the  poor- 
est and  most  overburdened  localities.  The  difficulty  of  such  an 
undertaking,  and  the  wish  to  enable  the  entire  rural  class  to  share 
in  the  good  things  provided  by  the  new  reig^,  caused  the  project 
to  be  given  up.  Alexander  III.  accepted  the  opinion  expressed 
by  a  "  Commission  of  Experts  "  appointed  on  this  occasion,  and 
a  general  reduction  for  all  the  former  serfs  of  Great-  and  Little- 
Russia  was  decided  upon.  The  imperial  ukhz  which  announced 
this  boon,  as  a  sort  of  gracious  greeting  fi-om  the  new  sovereign, 


THE  PEASANT  AND    THE  EMANCIPA  TION.  459 

promised  at  the  same  time  a  further  supplementary  reduction  to 
the  more  particularly  overburdened  villages.  This  meant  twelve 
millions  annually  lifted  from  the  mujik's  shoulders.*  It  came  to 
about  one  rouble  per  "  revision  soul,"  i.  e.  per  male  peasant,  as 
carried  on  the  old  capitation  rolls. f 

Such  an  alleviation  may  seem  less  than  trifling.  Yet  it  gener- 
ally amounts  to  about  one  seventh  of  the  average  rate  of  redemp- 
tion payments  up  to  1882,  However  inconsiderable  the  reduction, 
it  has  nearly  everywhere  effaced  the  disproportion  between  the 
dues  paid  by  the  former  serfs  and  by  the  Crown  peasants.  The 
four  or  five  millions  destined  to  succor  the  least  favored  regions, 
were  unfortunately  insufficient  to  ensure  the  well-being  of  the  more 
overtaxed  among  the  peasants.  It  might  have  been  better  to 
reserve  for  them  alone  whatever  resources  were  to  be  got  at,  instead 
of  scattering  them  over  the  whole  of  Great  and  I^ittle-Russia.  Not- 
withstanding the  government's  praiseworthy  efforts  and  the  real 
alleviation  awarded  them,  numbers  will,  for  a  long  time  to  come, 
be  weighed  down  by  want  and  taxes.  It  is  to  be  feared  that  in 
many  a  region  the  burdens,  of  which  Alexander  III.  has  done 
his  best  to  rid  the  peasant,  may  fall  back  upon  his  shoulders  under 
some  other  shape.  In  many  instances  what  the  former  serfs  gained 
from  the  reduction  of  the  redemption  dues  bids  fair  to  be  swal- 
lowed up  by  the  continually  increasing  provincial  and  municipal 
taxes. 

Paradoxical  as  it  may  appear  at  first  sight,  the  emancipation 
has,  on  the  whole,  modified  the  manner  of  life  of  the  liberated  serfs 
far  less  than  that  of  their  masters.  In  truth,  the  advantages,  the 
conveniences  afforded  by  serfdom  to  these  latter  could  never  be 

*  Of  this  sum  three  millions  were  charged  directly  to  the  treasury  ;  two 
millions  were  covered  by  the  surplus  in  the  redemption  fund  ;  seven  millions 
by  the  profits  of  the  State  Bank  and  the  liquidation  of  former  credit  insti- 
tutions. 

f  This  general  reduction  costs  about  seven  or  eight  millions  of  roubles 
annually,  for  it  does  not  apply  to  the  peasants  of  the  western  provinces, 
where  the  dues  were  reduced  as  early  as  1863,  in  consequence  of  the  Polish 
insurrection. 


4^0      THE  EMPIRE   OF   THE   TSARS  AND    THE  RUSSIANS. 

appraised  in  money.  Unpaid  service,  with  a  host  of  nameless  petty 
privileges,  made  farming  a  far  simpler  and  easier  matter  than  it 
became  under  the  free  labor  system.  The  loss  of  their  hands  com- 
pelled the  landlords  to  rouse  themselves  out  of  their  traditional 
indolence, — to  take  thought  for  their  affairs  themselves, — to  adjust 
themselves  to  new  demands  and  to  struggle  with  hitherto  unknown 
difficulties, — ^to  transform  all  their  methods  and  proceedings,  their 
mode  of  administration  at  the  very  least, — to  hire  laborers  and 
discuss  wages, — to  let  their  lands  on  leases  or  go  halves  with  their 
former  serfs, — a  ver}-^  complicated  programme  in  a  country  where 
farmers  and  capitals  are  scarce,  and  where  every  peasant  has  his 
own  bit  of  land  to  till. 

There  are  many  morose  conservative  landlords  who  do  not 
think  even  an  increase  of  income  an  adequate  compensation  for  all 
these  worries.  And  petty  worries  are  frequently  more  galling  than 
great  difficulties.  One,  in  particular,  is  often  complained  of: 
Formerly,  the  greater  part  of  the  manor  houses  were  situated  close 
to  the  villages,  to  enable  the  master  always  to  keep  an  eye  on  his 
subjects.  Now,  that  the  peasants'  dwellings,  with  their  little  en- 
closures and  the  communal  lands,  are  their  property,  the  noble 
landlord,  who  cannot  afford  to  build  himself  a  new  residence  on  an 
isolated  site,  is  next-door  neighbor  to  people  who  are  no  longer 
subject  to  him,  who  have  no  kind  even  of  official  relations  with 
him,  and  whose  lands  are  wedged  in  with  his  own.  This  proximity 
is  exasperating ;  he  does  not  feel  at  home  any  more,  has  no  privacy, 
and  is  all  the  time  fuming  at  the  drunken,  thievish  vicinity  he 
cannot  escape  from.  More  than  a  few,  on  this  seemingly  futile 
ground,  declare  the  country  to  have  become  uninhabitable. 

Of  all  the  consequences  of  emancipation  one  of  the  most  note- 
worthy assuredly  is  the  decadence  of  the  old  patriarchal  manners, 
not  only  in  the  relations  between  landlord  and  peasant,  but  in  the 
mujik's  own  izbh.  Along  with  the  bond  between  master  and  serf, 
that  between  father  and  son — ^the  family  bond,  has  become  slack- 
ened.    They  have  tasted  of  freedom,  and  now,  in  the  same  way 


THE  PEASANT  AND    THE  EMANCIPA  TION.  461 

that  the  serf  is  rid  of  the  master's  yoke,  the  son  strives  to  rid  him- 
self of  the  yoke  of  paternal  authority,  almost  absolute  until  now. 
Young  couples  want  to  be  independent  of  the  old  people.  They 
each  want  a  house  and  lot  of  their  own. 

The  awakening  of  the  peasant  to  a  liking  for  independence 
and  the  restoration  of  his  liberty  of  action  must,  in  the  end,  benefit 
the  towns  and  the  richer,  more  fertile  regions,  possibly  to  the 
detriment  of  the  poorer,  where  the  population  is  no  longer  held 
fast  by  the  artificial  barrier  of  serfdom. 

Men,  like  capital,  tend  to  where  labor  is  most  remunerative. 
The  colonization  of  the  arable  steppes  of  the  south  and  the  east,  as 
well  as  of  the  remoter  dependences  of  the  empire,  must  logically 
follow  on  the  breaking  of  the  peasant's  fetters.  If  it  has  not  yet 
taken  an  active  start,  it  is  because  of  the  hindrance  opposed  to  it 
by  the  administrative  conservatism  which  still  binds  the  peasants 
to  their  lands  through  the  institution  known  as  communal  solidar- 
ity, which  forbids  a  member  to  absent  himself  unless  by  the  con- 
sent of  all  the  others. 

One  of  the  chief,  but  naturally  also  slowest,  benefits  of  emanci- 
pation will  be  the  moral  improvement  of  both  serf  and  master.  Both 
have  grown  up  to  man's  estate  under  the  reign  of  serfdom  ;  both 
bear  the  marks  of  the  training  they  have  received  from  this  sorry 
educator.  Many  of  the  faults  imputed  to  the  Russian  nobility, 
many  of  those  thrown  in  the  Russian  peasant's  face,  come  from  that 
demoralizing  training.  The  vices,  opposite,  yet  connected  in  their 
very  opposition,  of  the  master  and  the  serf — the  fatuity,  frivohty, 
prodigality  of  the  one  ;  the  self-abasement,  duplicity,  thriftlessness 
of  the  other  ;  the  laziness  and  improvidence  of  both — flowed  from 
the  same  source.  The  landlord,  who  was  supplied  with  a  certain 
income  despite  his  incapacity  or  ignorance,  is  now  compelled  to 
deal  with  men  and  things,  to  study  characters,  to  regulate  his 
domestic  as  well  as  his  rural  expenditure  ;  he  has  no  alternative 
but  either  to  bestir  himself  or  to  accept  ruin. 

As  for  the  peasant,  the  stigmata  left  on  him  are  too  ancient 


462      THE  EMPIRE  OF  THE   TSARS  AND   THE  RUSSIANS. 

and  too  deep  to  allow  of  the  mark  being  obliterated  in  a  few  short 
years.  The  mujik  is  lazy  and  devoted  to  routine,  he  is  crafty  and 
untruthful  ;  a  proverb  of  his  own  says  he  would  outwit  the  devil 
any  day.  What  else  could  be  expected  from  this  long  personal 
bondage  superadded  to  political  servitude  and  which  robbed  him  of 
his  liberty  at  the  very  moment  when  his  country  had  recovered 
her  own  ?  The  liberated  peasant  is  certainly  far  from  showing  him- 
self worthy  of  the  half-idolatrous  honors  rendered,  in  his  person, 
to  the  Russian  people  by  its  numerous  admirers.  The  mujik  goes 
on  getting  drunk  and  beating  his  wife  ;  he  has  not  yet  learned  to 
invariably  respect  the  rights  of  property.  But  all  these  evil 
propensities  have  long  been  fostered  by  servitude :  drunkenness 
comes  from  a  longing  for  oblivion  ;  domestic  brutality  is  warranted 
by  that  of  the  master  or  his  bailiff ;  pilfering,  by  the  old  habit  of 
regarding  as  in  a  manner  belonging  to  him  what  belonged  to  his 
master.  These  faults  have  not  vanished  ;  some  even,  if  we  are  to 
believe  the  croakers,  may  have  become  intensified  through  the 
sudden  removal  of  restraint.  Drunkenness  especially,  they  aver, 
has  made  frightful  progress  :  for  drink  the  peasant  will  sell  even 
his  tools.  The  evil  in  this  direction  is  great,  undoubtedly  :  the 
surplus  shown  by  the  State  budget  is  almost  invariably  supplied 
by  the  excise  department.  Still,  as  this  surplus  is  generally 
due  to  an  increase  in  the  taxation  of  spirits,  as  it  is  not  accom- 
panied by  a  diminution  in  the  revenue  yielded  by  any  other 
branch  subject  to  taxation,  it  turns  out,  on  the  provincial  statis- 
tics' own  showing,  that,  in  spite  of  his  poverty,  the  mujik  earns 
enough  to  enable  him  to  add  to  all  his  compulsory  payments  the 
voluntary  contribution  of  the  tap-room,  apart  from  the  fact  that 
the  redemption  dues  which  he  annually  pays  are,  in  reality,  a  form 
of  compulsory  saving.* 

*  The  alleged  progress  of  drunkenness  is,  in  fact,  very  questionable, 
especially  for  these  latter  years.  Recent  statistical  reports  show  a  diminu- 
tion of  3  ^  in  1874  in  the  production  of  Tfddka  (rye  whiskey),  which  in  1864 
reached  the  figure  of  27  millions  of  vedrdy  a  measure  containing  about 
twelve  quarts,  while  there  was  in  the  population  an  increase  of  10  Jf ;  and 


THE  PEASANT  AND    THE  EMANCIPATION.  463 

Another  reproach  often  cast  at  the  freedman  is  his  improvidence. 
He  now  knows  even  less  than  he  did  how  to  protect  himself,  by  lib- 
eral savings,  against  the  instability  of  the  climate  and  consequent 
bad  crops,  which,  in  Russia,  always  threaten  even  the  very  best  lands. 
This  attack,  however,  from  the  advocates  of  the  past  turns  against 
themselves,  for  it  is  servitude  which  has  accustomed  the  peasant  to 
rely  on  the  master  for  everj'^thing,  as  a  child  on  his  guardian. 

It  appears  to  be  an  established  fact  that  since  the  peasants  have 
no  longer  their  bdrin  at  their  back,  they,  as  a  mle,  stand  accidents 
of  all  sorts,  so  frequent  in  Russian  rural  life,  worse  than  they  did 
before  :  epidemics,  epizootics,  fires,  destructive  insects,  insufficient 
crops  find  them  more  helpless.  It  is  therefore  quite  usual  to  hear 
regrets  about  not  having  an  institution  which  should,  as  did  the 
landlord  in  bygone  days,  succor  the  mujik  when  he  is  the  victim 
of  calamities  and  disastrous  visitations.  But  whatever  way  you 
turn — ^whether  you  appeal  to  the  commune,  to  the  provincial  as- 
semblies, or  to  the  State,  or  simply  have  recourse  to  a  credit  bank, 
it  is  no  easy  matter  to  organize  such  a  special  providence,  all  the 
less  that  the  peasant's  own  thriftlessness  and  ignorance  prove  ob- 
stacles in  the  way  of  every  contrivance  invented  for  his  benefit.* 

The  upshot  of  it  all  is  that  the  mujik  of  to-day  is  in  a  phase  of 
transition,  he  has  not  yet  been  able  to  throw  off  the  faults  be- 
queathed to  him  by  servitude,  and  now  adds  to  those  certain  other 
faults,  proper  to  liberty.  After  being  so  long  bent  double  under 
the  yoke,  it  is  not  astonishing  that  he  should  not  yet  have  straight- 
ened himself  to  his  full  stature,  that  he  should  not  always  know 
how  to  conduct  himself  in  a  manner  becoming  a  freeman,  thati^ 
personal  dignity  should  as  yet  be  as  unfamiliar  to  him  as  the  sense  of 
responsibility.  Nor  is  it  to  be  wondered  at  that,  from  the  stand- 
since  1874  another  diminution  is  said  to  have  taken  place  in  the  home  con- 
sumption. The  number  of  taverns  or  tap-rooms  {kabhks)  is  said  to  have 
gone  down  40  ^,  more  particularly  in  the  villages.  On  the  other  hand  the 
peasant  consumes  a  greater  quantity  of  tea  and  sugar— a  sure  token  of 
prosperity. 

*  Several  popular  banks  have  recently  been  founded  for  this  very 
purpose. 


464      THE  EMPIRE  OP  THE   TSARS  AND  THE  RUSSIANS. 

point  of  intellect  and  instruction,  his  progress  should  not  have 
been  more  rapid  ;  that  is  not  entirely  due  to  the  inadequacy  of  the 
schools  and  the  resources  of  the  State,  the  provinces,  the  rural 
communes  ;  it  comes  in  great  part  from  the  huge  thickness  and 
density  of  the  popular  layers,  and  from  the  absence  of  an  inter- 
mediate class  which  would  help  to  reach  the  bottom  of  them. 

The  portraits— or  caricatures — constantly  drawn  of  the  liber- 
ated mujik,  abroad  and  at  home,  give  no  reason  to  augur  badly 
for  his  future.  Let  us  recall  what  sort  of  a  being,  under  the  old- 
time  monarchy,  was  the  French  peasant,  the  animal  with  two  feet 
and  a  human  face  depicted  by  I,a  Bruyere,  such  as  F16chier 
shows  him  in  his  Grands  Jours  d'Auvergnc,  or  the  Englishman 
Young  on  the  very  eve  of  the  Revolution.  There  is  certainly 
nothing  there  to  put  the  mujik  to  the  blush  or  make  Russia's 
jfriends  despair  of  her  civilization.  There  are  countries — Egypt 
for  one — where  the  rural  man,  the  fellah,  though  nominally  free, 
has  been  so  lowered  by  sixty  centuries  of  oppression,  that  one 
wonders  whether  he  will  ever  have  the  strength  to  rise.  The 
Russian  peasant  never  suggests  similar  thoughts. 

In  spite  of  several  centuries  of  servitude,  the  manumitted 
peasant  has  rapidly  become  conscious  of  his  rights  and  is  ready  to 
defend  them  against  any  and  everybody.  That  is  easily  accounted 
for  :  the  former  serf,  accustomed  to  look  on  the  tsar  as  on  his 
natural  protector,  had  never  ceased  to  hope  for  liberty  and,  in  his 
relations  to  his  master  of  yesterday,  is  always  incUned  to  cotmt 
on  the  support  of  the  government.  Only  a  few  months  after  the 
inauguration  of  the  Statute,  one  of  the  principal  members  of  the 
"drafting  commission,"  himself  a  great  landholder,  Yuri 
Samdrin,  in  his  letters  to  his  friend  N.  Mililitin,  was  exult- 
ing at  what  he  called  the  "transfiguration  of  the  people"  and 
loudly  rejoiced  over  the  manner  in  which  the  peasants  were  get- 
ting educated  by  their  conflict  with  the  nobility.*    For  the  peas- 

*  Samdrin  who,  as  a  nile,  and  not  without  reason,  was  regarded  as  a 
pessimist,  wrote  the  following  lines,  which  may  appear  at  this  day  sangnine 


THE  PEASANT  AND    THE  EMANCIPATION.  465 

ants'  most  generous  advocates  as  well  as  for  the  eloquent  Slavophil 
journalist,  there  lay  the  main  point ;  in  their  eyes  the  material 
advantages  of  the  emancipation  were  a  secondary  consideration. 
The  great  object  with  them — we  can  see  that  from  Milititin's 
correspondence — was  to  raise  the  people,  to  awaken  the  peasant 
to  a  consciousness  of  his  own  personality  and  of  his  rights  as  a 
freeman,  even  should  yesterday's  masters  be  hurt  at  times  from 
being  "the  grindstone  on  which  the  people's  wits  were  getting 
whetted." 

The  mujik,  as  a  riile,  thoroughly  grasped  his  novel  rights ; 
unfortunately  he  did  not  always  show  as  clear  a  perception  of  his 
new  duties  and  obligations.  In  this  respect  he  promptly  unde- 
ceived his  best  friends'  hopes.  One  of  the  faults  the  famous 
Statute  can  most  justly  be  charged  with  is  an  excess  of  faith  in 
the  mujik' s  honesty,  or  rather  simplicity.  Prince  Tcherk^ssky 
did  not  hesitate  to  acknowledge  as  much  in  private  conversation. 
He  confessed  to  it  in  the  first  years  in  a  confidential  letter  to  his 
friend  and  former  colleague,  Milititin.  While  expressing  much 
legitimate  pride  in  the  success  of  their  common  work,  peaceably 
accomplished  in  spite  of  so  many  ill-natured  prophecies,  Tcher- 
k^ssky  regretted  only  one  thing  :  not  having  taken  more  precau- 
tions against  the  peasant's  unprincipled  propensities. 

Among  all  the  faults  that  can  be,  on  the  average,  imputed  to 
the  liberated  serf,  there  is  one  from  which  he  seems  to  be  abso- 
lutely free  :  it  is  acrimonj'^  or  ill-feeling  of  any  kind  towards  his 
former  master.     He  is  not  exactly  scrupulous  where  his  interests 

to  an  excess  of  optimism :  "  Without  any  exaggeration,  the  people  are 
transfigured,  from  head  to  foot.  The  Statute  has  loosened  their  tongfues, 
it  has  broken  through  the  narrow  circle  of  ideas  within  which,  as  though 
shut  in  there  by  a  spell,  the  people  vainly  went  round  and  round,  finding 
no  issue."  (Letter  to  Milititin,  May,  1861.)  A  few  months  later,  coming 
back  to  the  same  idea,  Samdrin  again  wrote:  "The  Statute  has  done  its 
work.  The  people  have  straightened  themselves  and  are  transfigured  :  they 
look,  walk,  talk  differently.  That  is  acquired ;  it  is  impossible  to  suppress, 
and  that  is  the  point.  In  their  conflict  with  the  other  class,  the  peasants 
are  now  getting  their  civic  education. "     (November,  1861.) 


466      THE  EMPIRE   OF   THE    TSARS  AND   THE  RUSSIANS. 

are  at  stake ;  but  he  commits  his  iniquities  ingenuously,  with  a  sort 
of  good-natured  slyness,  without  bitterness,  without  any  feeling  of 
envy  or  animosity,  any  systematic  ill-will.  In  spite  of  his  incura- 
ble distrust  and  all  that  has  been  said  about  his  ingratitude,*  the 
mutual  relations  of  the  two  classes,  but  lately  linked  together  by 
so  galling  a  bond,  have  retained,  at  least  externally,  a  character 
of  cordiality,  both  in  public  and  private  life.'  For  the  provincial 
assemblies,  where  the  two  orders  are  placed  side  by  side  ;  the 
peasants,  far  from  opposing  their  former  lords,  are  more  apt  to  be 
led  by  them.  Thus  all  the  speculations  on  imminent  class-strife 
and  popular  grudges  have  proved  vain.  Provided  the  late  master 
was  not  actually  a  tyrant,  the  mujik  still  calls  him  "his  good 
bdrin  " ;  if  he  has  no  occasion  any  more  to  assume  an  humble 
demeanor  to  \h&  pomihh-tckik  of  whom  he  implores  a  boon,  pros- 
trate at  his  feet  and  touching  the  ground  with  his  forehead,  he 
has  not  given  up  saluting  him  when  they  meet  with  one  of  those 

*  This  was,  for  some  years,  a  source  of  much  heartache  for  those  among 
the  landlords  whose  rule  had  been  mild  and  generous.  "  I  have  already 
mentioned,"  wrote  Prince  Tcherk4ssky,  "and  cannot  help  repeating,  how 
feeble  is  the  feeling  of  gratitude  among  the  peasants  towards  even  the  kind- 
est masters,  even  those  whose  conduct  towards  them  has  always  been  marked 
not  only  by  conscientiousness  but  by  magnanimity.  One  reading  of  the  proc- 
lamation has  swept  away  all  memory  of  benefits  received,  and  unfortunately 
the  nobility  could  not  bear  with  resignation  the  thought  that  this  fact,  how- 
ever painful,  was,  after  all,  rather  natural." — I^etter  to  Miliiitin,  June,  1861. 

'  It  can  be  positively  asserted  that  the  character  is  not  "external" 
merely,  but  very  real.  What  embitters  the  mutual  relations  between  two 
classes  is  when  the  superiority  of  one  over  the  other  is  due  to  conquest  and 
difference  of  race.  Where,  as  in  Russia,  such  is  not  the  case,  no  bitterness 
exists,  neither  at  the  time  nor  retrospectively.  Certain  family  differences 
have  been  adjusted  by  umpire,  that  is  all.  There  is  at  first  some  soreness, 
some  difficulty  in  getting  into  the  new  lines,  but  family  feeling  prevails 
through  it  all  and  helps  over  many  a  hard  place.  And  the  distrust  is  only 
skin  deep,  in  petty  matters  of  pecuniary  interests — the  universal  distrust  of 
the  peasant  all  over  the  world,  who  feels  at  a  disadvantage  before  trained 
intellect  and  is  always  afraid  it  will  be  used  against  him.  In  greater  and 
vital  things  the  mujik  instinctively  turns  to  his  superior  in  knowledge  and 
experience  for  guidance — as  the  author  remarks  a  few  lines  lower, — and  that 
his  confidence  is  not  abused,  the  astonishing  experience  with  the  "  Arbiters 
of  Peace  "  (see  pp.  436-437)  has  abundantly  proved. 


THE  PEASANT  AND    THE  EMANCIPA  TION.  467 

profound  inclinations  of  the  body  with  which  he  does  homage  in 
church  to  the  holy  images  inkons).  I  once  happened  to  be  present, 
in  a  southern  government,  at  a  business  interview  between  a  dele- 
gation of  peasants  and  a  landlord  whose  guest  I  was.  There  were 
a  dozen  of  them,  come  to  discuss  with  the  pomiish-tchik,  on  behalf 
of  their  commune,  the  leasing  of  some  land  belonging  to  him.  As 
they  neared  the  manor  house,  they  removed  their  caps  and  stood 
bareheaded  at  the  door,  patiently  waiting  for  the  master  to  finish 
his  dinner.  When  he  came  out  to  them  at  last,  accompanied  by 
his  bailiflf,  they  stood  before  him  in  a  circle,  cap  in  hand,  and 
launched  out  into  a  long  dissertation.  Sometimes  they  spoke  by 
turns,  sometimes  all  together,  frequently  lapsing  into  the  old 
humble  forms  of  speech  :  '^Bdtiushka  (father),  take  pity  ;  kind 
bdrin,  you  would  not  beggar  us," — yet  never  losing  ground,  hold- 
ing their  own,  standing  up  for  their  interests,  and  trying  to  touch 
the  landlord's  heart.  . 

As  a  set-off,  however,  to  the  profound  deference  which  they  in- 
variably show  their  former  masters,  the  peasants  are  very  far  from 
always  keeping  faith  with  them.  They  have  not  yet  been  able  to 
fully  realize  that  work  voluntarily  undertaken  should  be  punctu- 
ally carried  out.  Respect  for  agreements,  the  obligation  imposed 
by  a  contract,  are  things  that  do  not  at  all  accord  with  the  idea  the 
mujik  has  made  to  himself  of  liberty ;  he  takes  things  easy — to 
such  an  extent  that  his  unreliability  has  become  one  of  the  sores  ot 
rural  life.  By  a  contradiction  not  unfrequent  in  simple  natures, 
the  same  man  who  would  fain  dispense  with  all  obligations  towards 
others  on  the  ground  that  he  is  a  free  man,  still  thinks  himself  at 
times  entitled  to  make  use  of  the  privileges  pertaining  to  his 
former  condition  as  serf.  Does  he  need  timber  ?  he  serenely  cuts 
some  in  the  master's  forest.  Just  as  before  the  emancipation  he  is 
always  ready  to  appeal  to  the  landlord's  purse.  If  a  cow  is  taken 
sick  or  a  horse  is  hurt,  he  quite  innocently  goes  to  his  former 
master  and  asks  him  for  another,  forgetting  that  he  has  no  longer 
any  claim  on  him. 


468      THE  EMPIRE  OF  THE    TSARS  AND   THE  RUSSIANS. 

Yet,  though  neither  landlords  nor  peasants,  so  far,  bear  malice, 
it  is  not  impossible  that  the  new  state  of  things  may  contain  a 
latent  germ  of  disaffection  and  covetousness,  for  time  to  mature. 
We  must  not  forget  that  the  mujik  is  rarely  satisfied  with  the  piece 
of  land  allotted  him.  Instead  of  appeasing  his  craving  for  prop- 
erty the  imperial  proclamation  of  186 1  only  aroused  and  sharpened 
it.  The  compromise  imposed  by  autocracy  on  master  and  serf  is 
not  regarded  by  the  latter  and  his  children  in  the  light  of  a  final, 
irrevocable  thing.*  The  land  liquidation,  so  boldly  undertaken 
by  the  sovereign,  has  stirred  in  numbers  of  peasant  heads  a  dull, 
dim  notion  of  a  coming  social  liquidation,  another  agrarian  oper- 
ation, more  extensive  still  and  more  to  their  advantage — a  mirage 
which  the  people's  self-instituted,  doubtful  friends  skilfully  play 
off  before  his  eyes  in  the  distance.  The  revolutionary  propaganda 
and  the  radical  spirit,  both  impatient  of  anything  in  the  shape  of 
compromise  and  restraint,  have  been  steadily  working  for  the  last 
thirty  years  to  represent  the  imperial  reform  as  illogical  in  prin- 
ciple and  inadequate  in  practice.  They  are  at  one  in  this  with  the 
mujik' s  secret  instincts,  and  strive  with  might  and  main  to  second 
them  still  more  by  demonstrating  to  him  that  another  expropri- 
ation of  the  noble  landholders  and  a  redistribution  of  the  land  will 
be  the  natural  sequel  and  clinching  of  the  task  left  incomplete  at 
the  first  installment. 

It  cannot  be  denied  that,  in  this  respect,  the  entire  social  edifice 
has  been  shaken  by  this  first  and  great  reform,  which  claimed 
that  it  would  merely  broaden  and  strengthen  the  basis  of  it  in  a  ^ 
way  that  has  given  the  moral  ideas,  the  juridical  notions,  the 
political  conceptions  of  the  people,  such  a  shock  as  the  country, 
after  more  than  twenty  years,  has  not  yet  recovered  from.  All 
wise  precautions,  all  ingenious  temporizing  and  expedients  not- 
withstanding, it  may  be  said  that,  in  this  sense  at  least,  the  eman- 

*  In  one  of  the  districts  that  had  been  most  favored  in  1861,  a  function- 
ary asked  the  peasants  a  few  years  later  if  they  were  satisfied.  "Yes, 
bdtiushka"  they  replied ;  "  but  we  live  in  hopes  that  the  tsar  will  not 
forget  our  children  and  will  give  them  land,  too,  some  day." 


THE  PEASANT  AND   THE  EMANCIPATION.  469 

cipation,  so  skilfully  calculated,  so  happily  conducted,  has  not 
been  foreign  to  the  progress  of  the  radical  spirit ;  that,  by  feeding 
agrarian  cupidity,  it  has  unwittingly  supplied  weapons,  examples, 
pretences,  to  the  enemies  of  order  and  property. 

The  ease,  the  harmlessness,  with  which  this  revolution  was 
decreed  and  carried  out,  have  enticed  the  people  to  dream  of 
others,  no  less  lawful  and  no  less  easy.  For,  in  the  peasant's  eyes, 
the  tsar  both  can  and  may  do  anything,  and  the  marvel  of  a 
power  so  great  as  to  transform  in  one  day,  by  a  single  ukhz,  all  the 
conditions  of  property,  breeds  in  the  popular  mind  delusions  which 
disappointment  may  possibly  some  day  turn  against  that  power 
itself.  For  the  ignorant  masses, — and  this  cannot  be  too  much 
emphasized, — the  Emancipation  Act  has  effected  no  final  settle- 
ment whatever  :  one  ukhz  can  be  modified  by  another  ;  what  the 
tsar  has  done  in  1861,  the  tsar  is  free  to  undo,  twenty  or  thirty 
years  later,  for  the  greater  advantage  of  his  faithful  peasants. 

There  is  nothing  surprising  in  this ;  and  the  most  generous 
promoters  of  the  emancipation,  the  most  stoutly  convinced  advo- 
cates of  territorial  endowment,  were  too  clear-sighted  not  to  per- 
ceive the  truth  very  quickly.  Nothing  can  be  more  characteristic 
in  this  respect,  or  go  deeper  to  the  root  of  the  matter,  than  a  letter 
of  one  of  the  most  illustrious  members  of  the  Drafting  Commis- 
sion, Prince  Tcherk^ssky : 

* '  This  transformation, ' '  he  wrote  confidentially  to  his  friend  and 
former  colleague,  N.  Milititin,  * '  has  another  and  undesirable  side 
to  it,  of  which  I  do  not  speak  in  public,  but  which  I  mention  here, 
so  as  not  to  leave  the  impression  incomplete  :  it  is  (a  thing  in- 
separable fi-om  so  colossal"  a  piece  of  work,  fi-om  so  vast  a  transfer 
of  rights  and  obligations)  an  unhinging  of  the  popular  moral 
consciousness  as  to  right  and  wrong,  possible  or  impossible,  in 
regard  to  questions  of  'mine  and  thine.'  This  feature,  the  inevi- 
table accompaniment  of  every  great  social  revolution,  has  perhaps 
never  in  all  history  manifested  itself  with  such  clearness  as  at  this 
present  moment.    Just  now,  owing  to  the  undying  consciousness 


470      THE  EMPIRE   OF   THE    TSARS  AND   THE  RUSSIANS. 

which  always  abides  in  our  people,  but  is  more  than  ever  wide- 
awake in  them  in  consequence  of  the  transformation  operated 
before  their  eyes  by  one  imperial  ukhz,  the  peasant  has  the  profound 
conviction  that  there  are  no  limits  to  the  action  of  the  sovereign 
authority,  no  end  to  the  things  that  may  be  expected  of  it,  and 
which  it  can  give,  no  matter  at  whose  cost,  as  a  legitimate  com- 
pensation for  the  long  labor  and  hardships  heroically  endured  by 
their  class.  At  the  present  hour  this  is  the  deep-seated  thought 
in  the  breast  of  every  peasant,  and  you  will  admit  that  it  ill-accords 
with  the  teachings  of  the  economists.  Hence,  not  to  mention 
more  weighty  facts,  the  propensity  to  cut  down  our  trees, 
impartially  to  use  our  pastures, — things  that  are  really  very  un- 
pleasant in  daily  life ;  not  that  they  are  so  very  ruinous,  but  the 
perpetual  worry  is  wearing.  This  disrespect  of  the  peasant's  for 
the  rights  of  property  has  nothing  to  do  with  any  sort  of  revolu- 
tionary spirit ;  on  the  contrary,  from  a  certain  point  of  view,  it 
even  is  not  devoid  of  method  and  a  semi -juridical  character.  It 
is  evident  that  in  the  people,  obscurely,  but  down  to  a  great 
depth,  a  tradition  has  survived,  a  memory  of  a  time  when  landed 
property  was  not  yet,  or  not  to  any  great  extent,  in  the  hands  of 
the  nobles,  when  nearly  all  the  meadow  lands  and  the  forest  lands 
in  particular  were  used  indiscriminately  and  in  an  undefined  way 
by  all.  For  one  brief  instant  the  peasant  has  had  a  vision  of  the 
return  of  this  good  old  time,  and  even  now  he  firmly  cherishes  the 
conviction  that  the  government',  if  it  had  the  right  and  power  to 
suppress  serfdom,  has  the  no  less  incontestable  right  and  power  to 
change  all  other  conditions  of  landed  property,  at  least  such  as  are 
galling  to  the  peasant.  I  believe, ' '  added  the  Prince,  with  entire 
candor,  ' '  that  many  former  delegates  of  the  '  government  com- 
mittees,'* and  in  particular  of  the  Polish,  would-be  economists, 
should  these  lines  come  under  their  eyes,  would  rub  their  hands 
with  glee,  and  would  remind  us  that  they  had  foretold  it  all.    And 

*  He  taeans  the  delegates  representing  the  provincial  committees  of  the 
nobility  before  the  Drafting  Commission. 


THE  PEASANT  AND    THE  EMANCIPATION.  47 1 

yet,  I  must  say  that,  in  spite  of  all  these  worries,  inevitable  con- 
sequence as  they  are  of  the  great  transformation,  I  do  not  see  even 
now  that  there  was  the  least  possibility  of  doing  the  business  in 
any  other  manner ;  even  now,  taught  as  we  are  by  experience,  I 
would  not  hesitate  to  repeat  the  same  advice  that  we  gave  then. 
To  my  mind,  all  these  discomforts  only  prove  that,  in  the  best 
things,  there  is  an  alloy  of  evil." 

And  that  is  the  truth  of  it.  Tcherk^ky  was  quite  right  in 
repeating  that,  outside  of  the  road  that  had  been  taken,  there  was 
no  other  to  take.  In  spite  of  their  opponents'  gloomy  predictions 
and  virulent  upbraidings,  he  and  his  fellow-workers  cannot  possibly 
be  held  responsible  for  an  evil  inherent  in  the  situation,  due  to  the 
nature  of  autocracy  as  much  as  to  the  vagueness  and  obscurity  of 
the  property  laws  in  old-time  Russia.  By  liberating  the  serfs 
without  giving  them  any  share  of  the  soil,  the  way  would  have 
been  opened  to  far  worse  agrarian  troubles,  far  more  dangerous 
weapons  would  have  been  given  to  the  revolutionary  propaganda.* 

Deceived  in  all  his  hopes,  despoiled  of  the  piece  of  land  to 
which  he  believed  himself  entitled  by  inalienable  right,  the  mujik, 
had  he  lost  faith  in  the  tsar's  paternal  power,  might  have  fallen  a 
prey  to  the  anarchist  emissaries.  If  the  agrarian  laws  have  stirred 
in  the  people  a  vague  sense  of  covetousness,  it  is  perhaps  owing 
to  those  same  laws  that  the  insidious  appeals  repeatedly  addressed, 
in  the  course  of  these  last  years,  to  the  rural  plebs,  calling  to  them 
to  "  strike  out  for  land  and  liberty,"  have  not  found  more  response 
in  the  peasant's  smoke-blackened  izbci,  that,  notwithstanding  the 
ominous  threats  of  a  certain  set  of  propagandists,  the  Russian 
fields  and  villages  have  not  yet  had  their  Jacquerie  or  their  land- 
league  on  the  Irish  model. 

*  The  revolutionary  pamphlets  destined  to  be  read  by  the  people,  espe- 
cially insist  on  the  smallness  and  high  price  of  the  lands  allotted  to  the 
peasants.  One  of  them,  analyzed  by  Mr.  Ralston  {Nineteenth  Century, 
May,  1877)  and  entitled  From  the  Frying-pan  into  the  Fire,  strives  to  demon- 
strate to  the  tnujik  that  he  is  worse  oflFthan  in  the  old  times,  and  that  he 
soon  will  fall  into  a  miserable  condition  similar  to  that  of  the  English  peo- 
ple, "whom  the  rich  have  despoiled  and  enslaved." 


472      THE  EMPIRE  OF   THE    TSARS  AND   THE  RUSSIANS. 

The  nihilists  have  taken  care  to  keep  alive  in  the  people  ideas 
and  aspirations  which  time  might  already  have  disposed  of  had 
they  not  been  adroitly  nourished  by  interested  hands.  Ever  since 
the  last  Oriental  war,  especially  during  the  years  of  plotting, 
1 878-1 882,  the  agitators  never  tired  of  spreading  among  the  rural 
population  a  rumor  of  an  impending  redistribution  of  lands ;  so 
that,  on  some  estates,  the  peasants  actually  attempted  to  proceed 
to  the  division  of  the  noble  landlord's  acres.  To  put  an  end  to 
such  rumors,  the  government  repeatedly  had  to  assert,  solemnly 
and  publicly,  by  means  of  official  circulars,  that  the  Emancipation 
Act  had  settled  the  conditions  of  landed  property  for  the  future 
once  and  forever.  But,  says  the  proverb,  there  is  no  deafer  man 
than  he  who  won't  hear — and,  on  this  question,  the  peasant  is 
wonderfully  hard  of  hearing, — and  many  good  stories,  true  too, 
are  told  about  it.  Thus,  in  an  out-of-the-way  village,  an  educated 
peasant  was  reading  aloud  to  the  others  one  of  those  circulars 
which  gave  the  lie  direct  to  all  rumors  of  new  agrarian  laws : 
' '  Pshaw !  ' '  exclaimed  one  of  the  rustic  audience,  with  a  sly 
smile,  ' '  that  stuff  is  written  by  tchiiibvniks  (bureaucrats,  govern- 
ment employ6s)  ;  the  tsar  is  master  all  the  same. ' '  What  makes 
such  protests  wellnigh  hopeless  is  that  the  lower  police  agents  and 
other  subaltern  functionaries,  as  well  as  the  village  elders,  frequently 
share  the  delusions  which  it  is  their  duty  to  Xxy  and  dispel.  So 
they  compromise  with  their  conscience  by  announcing  to  the  vil- 
lagers that  the  new  division  of  lands  is  adjourned  until  further 
orders,  and  in  the  meantime  it  is  not  to  be  talked  about. 

What  he  has  long  looked  for  in  vain  from  the  generosity  of 
Alexander  II.,  the  mujik  persists  in  expecting  from  Alexander 
III.  With  the  nu-al  masses,  the  agrarian  question  which  the 
I,iberator  and  his  advisers  flattered  themselves  they  had  solved  in 
1861,  will  long  remain  an  open  one.  None  of  the  measures  taken 
by  Alexander  III.  to  settle  it — neither  the  suppression  of  "  tem- 
porary obligations,"  nor  the  abrogation  of  the  poll-tax,  nor  the 
reduction  of  redemption  dues — seem  to  have  the  desired  eflfect  as 


THE  PEASANT  AND    THE  EMANCIPATION.  473 

far  as  the  people  are  concerned.  The  kindness  and  sympathy 
lavished  by  the  I^iberator's  son  on  his  faithful  peasants  rather  tend 
to  keep  alive  their  chimerical  hopes  than  to  undeceive  them.  At 
the  time  of  his  coronation,  the  Emperor  made  it  a  point  to  declare 
with  his  own  lips  to  the  village-elders  assembled  in  Moscow,  that 
the  property  question  was  settled  for  good  and  all,  that  the  peas- 
ants were  not  to  look  for  any  more  allotments.  Many  subsequent 
facts  show  that  even  the  Tsar's  own  loyal  word  did  not  set 
their  minds  at  rest.  The  smallest  spark  will  kindle  the  latent 
fuel.  A  local  inquest,  a  rural  statistical  operation  suffices  to 
start  the  rumor  afresh.  This  almost  universal  expectant  state 
of  mind  opposes  a  serious  obstacle  to  a  general  census,  because 
the  rural  population  is  disposed  to  regard  anything  of  the  kind 
as  a  forerunner  of  a  redistribution  of  lands,  unless — such  is  the 
mujik's  readiness  to  give  credence  to  the  most  contradictory 
rumors — unless,  as  has  happened  in  some  villages,  it  is  regarded 
as  prefacing  the  restoration  of  serfdom  ! 

To  comprehend  the  whole  bearing  of  these  popular  notions  on 
land,  and  the  rehandling  of  property,  it  is  necessary  to  be  familiar 
with  the  form  of  land  tenure  in  use  outside  of  the  cities.  The 
vague  aspirations  called  forth  by  the  emancipation  are  perhaps  to 
be  ascribed  less  to  the  sudden  expropriation  of  the  former  lords, 
than  to  that  immemorial  institution — the  mir  and  the  peasant 
commune. 


^ 

^;i-     , 

1 

■^-  ^-^  '■'"Vht^  1 

^y^ 

^ 

i4>  vyT-^*<y) 

SBS'^ 

H 

MIR,  FAMIIyY,  AND  VILLAGE  COMMUNITIES. 


CHAPTER  I. 

Land  Tenure  Unchanged  by  Emancipation — Is  the  Mir  a  Slavic  Institution  ? 
Antiquity  and  Origin  of  Communal  Property  in  Russia — Differing  Views 
on  the  Subject — Difference  between  Moscovite  Russia  and  Western 
Europe  from  the  Standpoint  of  the  Agrarian  System. 

We  have  seen  that  the  Emancipation  Act,  while  endowing  the 
mujik  with  land,  practically  left  him  very  much  where  he  was  in 
the  times  of  serfdom.  He  now  owns  the  land  of  which  his  land- 
lord formerly  let  him  have  the  use,  but  the  mode  of  tenure  is  the 
same  still.  Now  as  formerly  the  land  belongs  to  the  peasants 
in  common,  not  personally,  not  individually,  by  hereditary  right. 
The  lots  purchased  from  the  landlords  were  not  distributed  to  the 
various  members  of  a  village  community,  but  remain  the  collective, 
undivided  property  of  the  commune.  The  peasant,  decorated  by 
the  law  with  the  title  of  landholder,  usually  owns  permanently 
and  certainly  only  his  cabin,  his  izbh — and  the  small  adjoining  en- 
closure, iLscidba  ;  as  to  the  rest  he  in  reality  only  has  the  usufruct 
of  the  lot  he  is  paying  for. 

Such,  from  times  immemorial,  has  been  the  form  of  land 
tenure  in  use  amidst  the  peasants  of  Moscovia  or  Great-Russia. 
The  emancipation  has  not  changed  it.  As  the  tenure  of  the  lands 
was  usually  collective,  so  the  redemption  of  them  has  also  been 
operated,  not  individually,  but,  as  a  rule,  by  communes.     It  is 

474 


MIR,   FAMILY,  AND  VILLAGE  COMMUNITIES.  475 

the  entire  village  and  not  the  individual  or  the  family  which,  un- 
der the  guaranty  of  mutual  solidarity,  is  answerable  to  the  State 
or  to  the  landlord  for  the  repayment  of  the  advances  made  by  the 
former,  so  that  the  emancipation  has  temporarily  rather  strength- 
ened the  old- Russian  commune  by  giving  the  State  an  interest  in 
its  preservation  until  payment  in  full  of  the  ransom  from  serfdom 
— this  new  solidarity  being  superadded  to  that  for  the  old  taxes. 

The  respect  shown  for  the  old  form  of  land  tenure  has  greatly 
simplified  the  transition  from  servitude  to  freedom,  removing, 
together  with  the  advantages,  also  the  dangers  which  brand-new 
institutions  would  have  brought  on.  From  dependence  on  the 
noble  landlord,  the  mujik  has  fallen  into  dependence  on  his  com- 
mune. The  bond  that  tied  him  to  the  soil  has,  then,  not  been 
really  broken.  He  is  still  bound  to  it  by  a  double  chain  :  undi- 
vided property  and  tax-solidarity.  The  peasants'  liberty  is,  in  a 
way,  like  their  property :  undivided  and  collective.  They  still 
are  bound,  if  not  to  a  master,  to  one  another,  and  cannot  move 
freely  outside  of  the  community.  It  has  been  said  that  the 
peasant,  liberated  from  the  landlord's  yoke,  had  become  the  serf 
of  his  commune.  This  is  a  manifest  exaggeration.  The  domi- 
nation of  the  commune,  which,  after  all,  is  only  a  control  exercised 
by  the  peasants  over  themselves,  cannot  be  likened  to  the  control 
over  them  of  an  individual  belonging  to  another  class,  of  difierent 
bringing  up. 

The  Russian  rural  commune  thus  presents  for  study  two  main 
sides  or  faces  :  the  system  of  land  tenure,  and  the  administrative 
or  governing  system.  Intimately  connected  and  interdependent, 
the  economic  and  administrative  communes  are  still  sufl&ciently 
distinct  to  merit  a  separate  study  of  each.  We  will  begin  with 
the  rural  commune,  i.e.  the  commune  in  its  capacity  of  collective 
landholder. 

In  the  eyes  of  Europe,  this  sort  of  agrarian  communism  is 
perhaps  the  most  noteworthy  feature,  and  the  strangest,  of  con- 
temporary Russia.     In  an  age  of  systems  and  theories  such  as 


47^      THE  EMPIRE  OF  THE   TSARS  AND    THE  RUSSIANS. 

ours,  a  study  of  this  kind  is  fraught  with  interesting  and  priceless 
lessons  to  the  nations,  uneasy  as  they  are  about  their  social  status 
and  oppressed  by  a  vague  unrest.  Unfortunately,  our  Western 
bringing  up,  our  national  habits  and  our  school  prejudices  do  not 
exactly  predispose  us  to  a  calm  and  impartial  comprehension  of 
such  a  system.  When  brought  face  to  face  with  community  of 
property,  under  no  matter  how  attenuated  a  form,  the  most  sober- 
minded  find  it  difl&cult  to  forbear  from  prejudging  the  question. 
And  yet  it  is  precisely  those  social  phenomena  that  seem  most 
novel  and  queerest  to  us  which  it  is  most  important  to  consider  in 
themselves,  weighing  the  facts,  unbiassed  by  any  preconceived 
idea.* 

Collective  property  as  it  is  in  use  among  the  peasantry,  while 
it  now  strikes  us  as  Russia's  most  prominent  feature,  was  one  of 
the  last  things  perceived  there  by  Western  Europe,  one  of  the  last 
to  be  noticed  by  the  Russians  themselves  in  their  own  countrj-. 
It  was  a  Westphalian  gentleman.  Baron  Haxthausen,  who  made 
the  discovery  during  his  travels  in  1842-43  ;  he  was,  at  least,  the 
first  to  impart  it  to  Europe,  in  his  famous  studies  on  the  inner 
condition  of  Russia,  f  Scientific  Europe,  as  was  but  natural,  was 
immensely  struck  at  encountering,  in  the  autocratic  Empire  of  the 

*  Through  all  the  following  study  of  the  agrarian  system,  I  shall  take 
my  facts  from  the  numerous  Russian  writings  on  this  subject,  especially 
from  the  grand  agricultural  inquest  held  in  1873,  the  results  of  which  were 
collected  by  the  government  under  the  title  of  :  Labors  of  the  Imperial 
Commission  for  the  Investigation  of  the  Actual  Condition  of  Rural 
Economy.  These  documents  have  been  supplemented  by  the  answers  to  the 
lists  of  questions  propounded  by  various  learned  societies,  such  as  the  Col- 
lected Materials  for  the  Study  of  the  Rural  Agrarian  Commune,  and  by 
divers  publications  issued  by  the  Central  Committee  of  Statistics,  by  the 
Ministry  of  State  Demesnes  or  by  various  Provincial  Assemblies  ^Z^w.s/z'i?^^, . 
such  as  Materials  for  tJie  Study  of  Contemporary  Landed  Property  and 
Rural  Economic  Industries  in  Russia  (St.  Pet.,  1880),  and  Statistics 
of  Landed  Property  and  the  Inhabited  Portions  of  European  Russia 
(1880-1881). 

t  Studien  iiber  die  innem  Zustdnde,  das  VolksUben  und  insbesondere 
die  Idndlichen  Einrichtungen  Russlands  (1847,  voL  i.,  ch.  vi.  ;  vol.  ii.,  ch. 
xviL). 


MIR,    FAMILY,   AND  VILLAGE   COMMUNITIES.  477 

North,  an  institution  which  seemed  in  a  measure  to  realize  the 
dreams  of  Western  utopists.  The  Russians,  suddenly  aroused  to 
a  knowledge  or  a  consciousness  of  this  national  peculiarity,  joyfully 
took  hold  of  it.  Naturally  impelled  to  bring  everywhere  to  the 
front  the  originality  of  the  Slavs,  as  the  Germans  vindicate  that 
of  the  Teutons  and  we  ourselves  at  times  that  of  the  Celts,  nume- 
rous Russian  writers  credited  these  agrarian  communities  to  the 
Russian  spirit,  the  Slavic  genius.  Slavophils,  respectful  admirers 
of  the  past  and  of  Moscovite  tradition, — democrats,  disciples  of 
the  West,  vied  together  in  extolling  the  Great-Russian  commune. 
All  insisted  on  seeing  in  it  the  primordial  institution  of  the  na- 
tion and,  at  the  same  time,  the  formula  of  a  new  civilization, 
the  future  principle  for  the  impending  regeneration  of  Europe, 
actually  a  prey  to  class  strife  and  imperilled  by  the  excesses  of 
individualism.  In  the  eyes  of  a  certain  class  of  patriots,  land* 
community,  obscurely  kept  alive  by  the  enslaved  peasant,  became 
a  sort  of  secret  revelation,  confided  to  a  chosen  people,  and  of 
which  the  Russians,  for  the  good  of  humanity  at  large,  were 
bound  to  make  themselves  the  apostles  and  the  missionaries. 

The  recent  studies  in  comparative  history  and  law  have  dis- 
pelled these  visions  of  national  self-conceit.  Within  the  empire, 
agrarian  institutions  similar  to  the  Slavic  communities  were  dis- 
covered to  exist  in  most  indigenous  tribes  of  alien  race,  from  the 
Lapps  and  the  Samoy^ds  of  the  north  to  the  Mordvin,  the  Tchu- 
vash,  the  Tcheremiss  of  the  centre.  Abroad,  agricultural  com- 
munities more  or  less  similar  to  those  which  still  flourish  in 
Russia,  are  met  with  among  the  most  different  peoples — in  India, 
on  the  isle  of  Java,  in  Egypt.  In  the  past  they  have  turned  up  at 
the  two  extreme  ends  of  the  earth — in  Mexico  and  Peru,  as  well 
as  in  China  and  in  Europe.  To  the  mir  of  Great-Russia  was  op- 
posed the  ager  publicus  of  the  Romans  (which  differed  from  it  in 
every  particular),  the  Teutonic  mark,  which  appears  to  have  come 
a  little  nearer  to  it,  and  which  can  be  traced  all  through  the  Middle 
Ages — in  Germany,  in  Switzerland,  in  Scandinavia,  in  England, 


478      THE  EMPIRE  OF   THE    TSARS  AND    THE  RUSSIANS. 

even  in  France.  On  this  point  the  labors  of  Sir  Henry  Maine, 
Maurer,  Nasse,  E.  de  Laveleye,  leave  no  doubt.*  It  little  mat- 
ters that  one  or  other  of  these  scholars  should  have  allowed 
himself  to  be  carried  too  far  by  external  analogies  or  the  love 
of  system  ;  it  little  matters  that,  where  classical  nations  are  con- 
cerned, and  more  notably  the  Spartans,  our  historians  have  been 
duped  by  mendacious  legends  and  communistic  romancing.  The 
collective  mode  of  tenure  appears  to  have  been,  with  a  great  many 
nations,  the  most  ancient  form  of  landholding.  It  is  only  after 
having  been  for  centuries  the  undivided  property  of  the  tribe,  the 
clan,  or  the  commune,  that  land  ended  by  becoming  the  perma- 
nent and  hereditary  property  of  individuals.  Contrary  to  the 
conceptions  of  certain  democrats  of  Russia  or  the  West,  individual 
property  is  a  comparatively  new,  modem  form  of  land  tenure  ;  col- 
lective property  is  the  old,  the  primitive,  archie  form.  So  that 
the  Russian  village  community,  far  from  being  an  innovation,  an 
experiment  or  a  prophecy,  is  really  a  block  from  a  vanished  world, 
a  witness  of  a  perished  past,  a  sort  of  fossil,  preserved  in  a  country 
long  shut  off  from  the  influences  which  shaped  the  course  of 
things  on  the  rest  of  the  continent.  With  regard  to  this,  as  to 
many  other  things,  the  originality  of  Russia  and  the  Slavs  has 
nothing  to  do  with  either  race  or  national  genius  ;  it  simply  means 
that  the  Russians  and  the  greater  part  of  the  Slavs  have  stopped 
*  Henry  Sumner  Maine,  Village  Communities  in  the  East  and  West; 
Maurer,  Einleitung  zur  Geschichte  der  Mark-Haf-Dorf  und  Stadt-  Verfas- 
sung ;  E.  de  Laveleye,  De  la  PropriSti  et  de  ses  Formes  Primitives.  It 
should  be  noted  that,  according  to  one  of  the  most  perspicacious  investiga- 
tors of  history,  M.  Fustel  de  Coulanges,  there  is  nothing  to  prove  the  exist- 
ence of  collective  property,  with  periodical  divisions,  either  among  the 
Greeks  or  the  Romans,  the  Gauls  or  the  Merovingian  Franks,  or,  even  Tacitus 
notwithstanding,  among  the  Germans.  The  author  of  the  Citi  Aniiqtie  is  of 
opinion  that  property,  with  all  these  nations,  was  hereditary,  mostly  in 
families,  in  this  sense — that  originally  the  individual  had  not  the  right  to 
alienate  any  of  it.  See  Fustel  de  Coulanges,  Le  Problime  des  Origines  de 
la  ProprUU  Foncihre,  in  the  Revue  des  Questions  Historiques,  April,  1889 ; 
further,  by  the  same  author,  Recherches  sur  quelques  Problimes  d'Histoire 
(1886),  and  Histoire  des  Institutions  Politiques  de  V Ancicnne  France ; 
VAlleu  et  le  Domaine  Rural  pendant  la  Ptriode  Mkromngienne  (1889). 


MIR,   FAMILY,   AND  VILLAGE   COMMUNITIES.  479 

at  an  economic  and  hence  social  status  old  enough  to  have  sunk 
into  oblivion  in  other  countries.  The  diflference  between  them  and 
the  West  in  this  matter  lies  less  in  man  and  race  than  in  the  ex- 
ternal conditions,  less  in  the  nation's  character  than  in  the  age  of 
its  civilization. 

It  would  be  a  study  of  the  deepest  interest  if  we  could  follow 
through  the  ages  the  transformations  of  the  village  communities  in 
Russia.  Unfortunately  it  is  with  them  as  with  most  institutions 
that  are  emphatically  a  people's  own.  For  the  philosopher  and 
the  historian  these  are  the  most  important,  and  they  are  always 
those  wrapped  in  the  thickest,  most  impenetrable  veils  ;  they  rest 
in  the  darkness  in  which  the  disdain  of  the  chroniclers  leaves 
the  popular  masses  and  rural  classes  to  the  sleep  of  oblivion. 
The  obscurity  on  this  subject  is  such,  that,  even  between  Russian 
writers,  there  could  arise  violent  discussions,  not  only  on  the 
origin  but  on  the  antiquity  of  the  Russian  village  communities. 
Distinguished  journalists,  Mr.  Tchitcherin  in  particular,  have 
contested  the  antiquity  or  patriarchal  filiation  of  the  commune 
based  on  mutual  solidarity.  lyong  before  the  researches  made  in 
the  West  on  this  delicate  matter,  this  writer,  already  preceded  by 
Granbfsky,  demonstrated  in  Russia  itself,  that  far  from  being  a 
national  institution  peculiar  to  the  Slavs,  village  or  family  com- 
munities, such  as  the  Russian  mir  or  Serbian  zadrtiga,  had  long 
existed  in  more  than  one  people  of  alien  race.  In  the  face  of  the 
prejudices  entertained  by  many  of  their  countrymen,  these  writers 
reminded  their  readers  that  everj'^where  property  had  developed 
hand  in  hand  with  the  feeling  of  individuality  ;  that  the  progress 
of  the  one  is  in  direct  ratio  to  the  development  of  the  other.  With 
seeming  inconsistence,  the  same  journalists  who  brought  out 
into  such  relief  the  primitive  and  cosmopolitan  character  of  the 
agrarian  communities,  regarded  them  in  Russia  as  being  compara- 
tively recent.  To  hear  them,  the  Slavic  race,  out  of  which  has 
come  the  Russian  state,  did  indeed  start  from  collective  property, 
but  there  is  nothing  to  prove  that  the  mir  based  on  mutual  soli- 


480      THE  EMPIRE  OF  THE   TSARS  AND   THE  RUSSIANS. 

darity — the  Russian  commune  in  its  actual  form — should  be  di- 
rectly descended  from  this  primitive  patriarchal  communism. 
Mr.  Tchitcherin  claims,  on  the  contrary,  that  communal  land 
tenurCj^and  especially  periodical  re-allotment,  were  foreign  to  Mos- 
covia  so  long  as  the  peasant  remained  free. 

It  is  serfdom,  says  this  school,  it  is  the  solidarity  to  which  the 
peasants  submit  in  order  to  ensure  the  payment  of  the  taxes, 
and  military  conscription,  which  caused  the  introduction  of  this 
kind  of  equal  division.  To  make  their  point,  they  quote  ancient 
historical  documents,  authentic  charters,  wills,  deeds  of  division ; 
they  refer  to  Little- Russia,  a  radically  Slavic  and  Russian  country, 
where,  prior  to  the  Moscovite  domination,  only  personal  land- 
owners were  known,  noble  or  Cosack,  and  peasants  attached  to 
the  soil  by  contracts  freely  entered  into.  Instead  of  being  a 
patriarchal  or  family  institution,  the  Russian  commune,  Mr. 
Tchitcherin  contends,  is  merely  "  a  creation  of  the  state."  The 
Moscovite  mir^  he  asserts,  has  neither  the  same  origin,  nor  the 
same  character  as  the  zadruga  of  the  Serbs  and  Bulgars,  whose 
family  communities  retained,  through  all  these  peoples'  history, 
the  patriarchal  impress.  The  Russian  commune,  on  the  contrary, 
is  not  the  spontaneous  outcome  of  primitive  property  or  of  the 
free  union  of  husbandmen  ;  it  is  an  outcome  of  the  bondage  to 
the  soil  and  the  imperative  wants  of  political  sovereignty,  under 
the  influence  of  certain  proceedings  of  the  government. 

To  this  system,  opposed  by  the  greater  number  of  Russian 
writers,  be  they  historians  or  critics,  may  there  not  be  a  certain 
portion  of  truth  ?  It  is  hardly  to  be  admitted  that  the  Russians, 
who,  of  all  Slavs,  have  preserved  this  primitive  mode  of  land 
tenure  in  its  most  unimpaired  form,  should  have  come  back  to  it 
one  fine  day,  after  having  completely  abandoned  it.  One  cannot, 
on  the  other  hand,  bring  oneself  to  believe  that,  inversely  to  all 
known  nations,  the  Moscovite  peasants  should  have  stolen  a 
march  on  the  modem  utopists  and  quickly  stepped,  at  the  end 
of  the  sixteenth  century,  from  personal  to  collective  property. 


MIR,   FAMILY^  AND  VILLAGE   COMMUNITIES.  48 1 

What  sounds  admissible,  nay  probable,  is  that  the  establishment 
of  serfdom  and  the  solidarity  in  the  matter  of  taxes,  strengthened 
in  the  people's  mind  the  attachment  to  a  mode  of  land  tenure  out 
of  which  Russia  might  otherwise  have  worked  her  way  as  well 
as  the  other  European  nations.  Serfs  and  masters,  State  and 
private  individuals  could  very  well  have  found  it  to  their  interest 
to  uphold  and  restore,  where  it  tended  to  disappear,  a  system 
which,  owing  to  regular  re-allotments,  insured  to  the  country 
a  more  equable  distribution  of  taxes  and  dues.  Serfdom,  and  the 
entire  financial  and  administrative  system  of  Moscovia  based  on 
it,  thus  could,  keeping  pace  with  the  regular  increase  of  the 
population,  contribute  to  the  general  adoption,  if  not  of  the 
principle  itself  of  village  communities,  at  least  of  the  custom  of 
periodical  re-allotments,  which  at  the  present  day  appear  to  be 
one  of  the  essential  features  of  the  Russian  mir. 

In  this  debate,  which  we  do  not  pretend  to  settle  one  way  or 
the  other,  care  should  be  taken  to  discriminate  between  collective 
property  and  the  custom  of  re-allotments.  The  former  can  main- 
tain itself  a  long  time  without  the  latter,  and  the  absence  of  one 
is  no  proof  against  the  existence  of  the  other.  So  long  as  pas- 
toral life  prevails,  or  the  still  more  primitive  life  of  hunting  and 
fishing, — so  long  as,  even  in  the  agricultural  stage,  the  figure  of 
the  population  remains  very  low  in  proportion  to  the  area  it 
occupies,  there  is  very  little  reason  to  divide  the  land  into  regular 
lots.  To  this  day,  in  many  Siberian  villages,  even  in  some 
districts  in  the  north  of  the  empire,  each  head  of  a  family  is  free 
to  till  as  much  land  as  he  can  manage.  Some  writers  think  they 
have  proved  that,  up  to  the  eighteenth  century,  allotment  was 
unknown  in  the  north  of  Russia,  the  land  still  being  regarded  all 
the  time  as  common  property.  Similar  remarks  have  been  made 
about  the  southern  steppes :  Mr.  Mackenzie  Wallace  tells  us 
that  among  the  Cosacks  of  the  Don,  where  land  is  very  plentiful, 
periodical  re- allotments  are  of  recent  introduction.  So  long  as 
the  number  of  Cosacks  was  insuflScient  to  occupy  all  the  land, 


482       THE  EMPIRE  OF  THE    TSARS  A.VD  THE  RUSSIANS. 

every  one  was  welcome  to  as  much  of  it  as  he  could  handle,  pro- 
vided he  did  not  encroach  on  other  people's  cultivated  lots.  The 
increase  of  population  was,  in  the  natural  course  of  things,  to 
put  a  stop  to  this  unlegalized  right  of  pre-occupancy.  In  order 
that  each  Cosack  should  have  his  share  of  the  soil  enabling 
him  to  acquit  himself  of  his  obligations  towards  the  state,  reg- 
ular allotment  had  to  be  recurred  to.  Similar  causes  may  have 
led  to  similar  results  in  various  regions. 

Many  and  various  causes  combined  to  keep  up  in  the  eastern 
portion  of  the  empire  a  state  of  things  which  had  long  ceased  to 
exist  in  the  west  of  it :  the  degree  of  civilization  and  the  economic 
condition  of  Moscovia, — the  political  system  and  the  patriarchal, 
or,  more  correctly,  the  patrimonial,  domanial  character  of  the 
government, — and  lastly  the  very  nature  of  land  and  soil.  In 
those  vast  plains,  unbounded  to  the  eye,  man,  living  always  at 
large,  did  not  feel  the  necessity  of  securing  a  piece  of  land  for  his 
own  use  by  fencing  it  in.  Where  population  was  dense,  crowded 
on  a  restricted  space,  as  in  Greece  and  Italy,  the  god  Terminus 
early  became  a  revered  deity,  one  of  the  essential  wardens  of 
social  life.  In  Russia,  where  the  land  was  vast  and  the  popula- 
tion scant,  it  must  have  been  long  before  men  felt  the  occasion  for 
such  a  deity.  The  crisis  that  hastened  the  transition  from  col- 
lective to  individual  property  has  everywhere  been  increase  of 
population.  Everj'-where,  the  curtailment  of  each  member's  lot 
in  consequence  of  the  greater  number  of  sharers  was  one  of  the 
things  that  put  an  end  to  the  community,  by  putting  a  stop  to 
the  periodical  re-allotments  and  leaving  each  family  in  full  pos- 
session of  the  lot  of  which  it  had  been  hitherto  usufructuary, 
"They  change  fields  each  year,"  says  Tacitus  of  the  Germans, 
"and  there  still  remains  untenanted  land."  To  whom  could  these 
words  apply  better  than  to  Moscovia?  The  eastern  half  of 
Europe,  the  richest  in  land  and  at  all  times  the  least  populous, 
was  of  necessity  to  be  the  last  to  give  up  the  primeval  system. 
This  result  was  helped  by  Mosco^da's  isolation,  moral  as  well  as 


MIR,  FAMILY,  AND  VILLAGE  COMMUNITIES.  483 

geographical.  Had  Russia  been  more  intimately  connected  with 
the  West,  through  religion,  politics,  manners,  Latin  or  Teutonic 
influences  might  have  accomplished  the  change  much  sooner — 
resulting  in  Roman  law  or  feudal  customs. 

In  Great-Russia,  /.  e.  in  all  Moscovia,  collective  property  almost 
exclusively  prevails  to  this  day,  both  among  the  former  serfs  and 
the  Crown  peasants.  In  all  that  immense  region  extending  from 
the  Neva  to  the  Ural,  the  number  of  peasants  owning  land  on 
personal  titles  does  not  exceed  i  ^  or  2  j^  of  the  totality,  and  even 
these  few  individual  possessions  are  nearly  all  of  recent  origin. 
Down  to  1 86 1,  the  only  individual  landholders,  outside  of  the 
nobility  and  the  foreign  colonists,  were  the  odnodvbrtsy,  who 
formed  a  small  class  by  itself.*  In  Western  Russia,  at  one  time 
subject  to  the  domination  of  Poland  or  Sweden,  and  hence  brought 
into  closer  contact  with  Kurope,  individual  property  is  the  rule. 
The  limits  of  the  two  systems  may  almost  be  said  to  mark  even 
yet  the  old  boundaries  of  the  Moscovite  and  the  Lithuano-Polish 
States,  t  In  some  few  governments,  such  as  those  of  Kief  and 
Poltdva,  there  is  a  mixture  of  both  forms.  In  one  or  two,  in  that 
of  Moghilef  for  instance,  the  Russians  have  attempted,  not  very 
successfully,  to  naturalize  the  community  system.  It  was  intro- 
duced there  after  the  emancipation  and  the  Polish  rising  of  1863  ; 
but,  if  certain  testimony  of  the  agricultural  inquest  is  to  be  be- 
lieved, the  peasants  shirk  it  in  the  practice  and  look  on  it  as 
another  form  of  serfdom'     In  the  adjoining  government  of  Minsk 

*  See  Book  V.,  Chap  I.  And  even  with  them  the  mode  of  land  tenure 
was  frequently  a  sort  of  family  community.     See  following  chapter,  p.  491. 

t  In  lyithuania  proper,  i.  e.  in  the  governments  of  K6vno  and  Vilna,  as 
well  as  in  the  three  Baltic  provinces,  no  other  form  of  prop^y  than  the 
individual  is  known.  The  latter  has  even  been  introduced  in  a  few  com- 
munes of  the  government  of  Pskof,  by  the  Ehst  or  I/ctt  colonists  from 
Liefland.  In  White-Russia  and  Ivittle-Russia,  individual  property  takes 
the  lead  even  yet,  though  its  predominance  is  no  longer  as  exclusive  as  it 
was.  In  Bessarabia,  where  the  Russians  show  a  mixture  of  Rumanians, 
both  systems  exist  side  by  side.  It  is  to  be  noted  that  several  of  the  most 
prosperous  German  colonies,  especially  those  on  the  Lower  Volga,  have 
adopted  the  Russian  custom  of  periodical  re-allotments. 


484       THE  EMPIRE  OF  TffE  TSARS  AND    THE  RUSSIANS. 

they  were  not  to  be  induced  to  exchange  the  Western,  European 
mode  of  land  tenure  for  the  Great- Russian.  The  Little-Russians 
also  are  reputed  to  object  to  community.  It  is  not  always  so, 
however :  on  the  eastern  bank  of  the  Dniepr,  in  the  government 
of  Vor6nej  for  instance,  Little-Russians  may  be  met  with  who  are 
not  less  accustomed  and  devoted  to  the  system  of  common  land 
tenure  than  their  Great-Russian  neighbors. 

Elsewhere,  in  Podolia  and  Volhynia,  where  individual  tenure 
appeared  rooted  in  the  local  manners,  there  have  been  cases  of 
peasants,  after  the  emancipation  had  provided  them  with  lands, 
overthrowing  their  landmarks  and  effecting  a  new  division  on  the 
commtmal  basis.  It  is  even  said  that  some  villages  in  these  gov- 
ernments have  taken  to  annual  re-allotments.  This  fact,  often 
quoted  in  arguments  on  the  side  of  communal  property,  can  be 
accounted  for  in  two  ways.  The  method  of  redemption  adopted 
was  so  well  adapted  to  the  system  of  village  communities  that, 
solidarity  being  taken  as  the  basis  of  the  payments,  it  brought 
about  the  re-introduction  of  that  system,  even  if  not  of  periodical 
re-allotments,  in  districts  where  it  had  long  been  out  of  use. 
The  exorbitant  taxes,  which  frequently  absorb  the  greater  part 
of  the  income  jrielded  by  the  land,  may  also  have  contributed 
towards  the  same  result,  as  though  to  confirm,  by  modem  in- 
stances, Mr.  Tchitcherin's  theory  concerning  the  establishment  of 
periodical  allotment  in  old  Moscovia.  Lastly,  as  certain  observa- 
tions of  the  agricultural  inquest  would  lead  us  to  conclude,  the 
vacillating  uncertainty  of  the  mujik's  ideas  on  the  rights  of  prop- 
erty, the  confusion  of  his  juridical  notions  on  the  subject,  the 
little  confidence  he  reposes  in  his  title, — all  these  things  may,  in 
many  localities,  have  swelled  the  tide  in  favor  of  the  cTiange.  If 
one  of  the  local  "  marshals  of  the  nobility"  is  to  be  believed,  the 
peasants  have  not  sufiicient  faith  in  their  permanent  right  to  their 
property  to  venture  opposing  any  resistance  to  the  fiat  of  the 
commune  when  it  is  the  majority's  pleasure  to  submit  to  a  new 
division.     The  well-to-do  peasants  this  curious  document  repre- 


MIR,   FAMILY,  AND  VILLAGE   COMMUNITIES.  485 

sents  as  needing  to  be  enlightened  concerning  the  validity  of  their 
titles,  and  to  have  the  ownership  of  the  lands  allotted  to  them  in 
some  way  guaranteed.  However  it  may  stand  with  these  details, 
it  is  a  fact  that  the  emancipation  may  have  indirectly  opened  to 
communal  property  and  re-allotment  districts  which  until  now  were 
closed  to  these  institutions.*  Singular  !  that  the  Statute  of  1861 
should  have  apparently,  if  only  for  a  time,  not  merely  confirmed 
in  its  former  area,  but  extended  to  new  villages,  a  form  of  land 
tenure  which  appears  to  have  been  strengthened,  if  not  actually 
introduced,  three  hundred  years  before,  by  the  establishment  of 
serfdom ! 

♦  The  question  here  is  naturally  not  of  isolated  cases.  In  transferring 
to  the  peasants  the  ownership  of  the  lands  of  which  they  had  the  usufruct, 
the  agrarian  laws  of  1861  respected  the  form  of  land  tenure  current  in  every 
region.  Though  often  accused,  both  at  home  and  abroad,  of  partiality 
towards  collective  tenure,  the  compilers  of  the  Emancipation  Act  were 
merely  content  to  let  it  alone  where  it  existed  and  very  careful  not  to  in- 
troduce it  anywhere  else  by  legislative  authority.  N.  Milidtin  remarked  in 
Paris,  in  May,  1863,  before  the  SociitS  des  ^conomistes :  "The  lawgiver 
does  not  impose  on  the  rural  class  any  one  form  of  property  preferably  to 
others  ;  it  may  be  individual  or  communal  according  to  the  custom  prevail- 
ing in  each  given  region,  and  it  will  be  left  to  the  purchasers'  own  pleasure 
whether  they  will  transform  the  lands  acquired  by  the  commune  into  private 
and  individual  property." 

This  was  strictly  true  ;  the  communes,  even  the  individuals,  were  free 
to  pass  from  communal  to  personal  property.  Article  165  of  the  Statute,  it 
is  true,  did  not  empower  the  peasants  freely  to  dispose  of  their  lots  until 
they  had  fully  redeemed  them.  The  article,  even  with  this  restriction,  was 
regarded  as  a  threat  to  the  mir.  There  have  been  speculators  who  have  got 
the  peasants  to  sell  them  their  lots  by  advancing  the  redemption  money, 
thus  allowing  themselves  to  be  despoiled  of  the  property  which  the  law  was 
trying  to  secure  to  them.  Accordingly,  several  Russians  spoke  up  in  favor 
of  having  Article  165  suppressed  and  making  the  peasant  lots  inalienable. 


BOOK  VIII.      CHAPTER  II. 

The  Village  Communities  have  their  Prototype  in  the  Family — The 
Commune  Frequently  Looked  upon  as  an  Enlarged  Family — Filiation 
of  the  Village  Communities  from  the  Family  Communities — The  Peas- 
antry's Patriarchal  Manners  and  the  Ancient  Village  Family — Authority 
of  the  Head  of  a  Household — Community  of  Possessions — Domestic 
Bonds  Relaxed  by  the  Emancipation — Increase  of  Family  Partitions — 
Material  Inconvenience  and  Moral  Advantages  Accruing  Therefrom — 
Servitude  of  the  Women — Progress  of  Individualism  ;  its  Consequences. 


To  the  village  communities  of  Great- Russia  a  protot3rpe  may 
be  found,  even  simpler  and  more  ancient,  yet  living  still — the 
family.  In  the  mujik's  izbh,  the  family,  in  truth,  has  preserved  to  our 
day  a  patriarchal,  archie  character.  Property  remains  undivided 
between  the  children  or  between  brothers  who  dwell  together 
tmder  one  roof ;  each  son,  each  male  of  the  house,  has  an  equal 
right  to  it.  The  agrarian  community  seems  to  be  contained 
in  embryo  in  the  family,  the  former  being  constructed  on  the 
model  of  the  latter.  So  that  the  Russian  commune  may  be  re- 
garded as  an  enlarged  family,  in  which  the  soil  remains  the  col- 
lective property  of  the  community,  each  man  or  each  household 
receiving  for  his  support  an  equal  share  thereof.  The  Moscovite 
ntir  is  often  considered  simply  as  an  extension  of  the  family, 
grown  too  numerous  to  reside  in  the  same  enclosure  or  to  go  on 
cultivating  the  land  in  common.  This  view,  held  by  many  econo- 
mists, both  Russian  and  foreign,  may  in  many  cases  be  correct, 
though  not  invariably.  It  is  not  always  easy  to  prove  the  mem- 
bers of  a  village  community  to  be  descended  from  one  common 
ancestor,  even  when  there  is  tradition  to  show  for  it.     There  may 

486 


\ 


MIR,   FAMILY,   AND  VILLAGE   COMMUNITIES.  487 

exivSt  reasonable  doubts  concerning  the  historical  conditions  of  the 
filiation  from  family  to  commune,  even  concerning  the  order  of 
filiation.  There  may  have  been  in  a  given  generation  a  sort  of 
alternation  between  these  forms  of  property,  the  commune  being 
originally  bom  of  the  family,  and  the  family  communities,  in 
their  turn,  of  sections  of  the  village  community.* 

Here  is  not  the  place  to  linger  over  these  curious  and  obscure 
questions.  By  whatever  process  collective  property  may  have 
been  evolved  in  the  Russian  peasantry,  the  tie  between  family  and 
commune,  between  domestic  life  and  mir  life,  is  too  close  to  allow 
of  understanding  the  latter  without  the  former.  A  glance  at  the 
mujik's  home  life  offers  the  greater  interest  that  the  old  manners 
are  fast  disappearing.  What,  up  to  the  emancipation,  was  the 
distinctive  characteristic  of  the  family  in  the  lower  classes,  was 
its  unity  :  joint  habitation,  undivided  property,  and  paternal 
authority.  These  time-honored  customs,  as  already  remarked, 
have,  in  a  few  years,  been  shaken  by  the  emancipation.      The 

*  The  family  communities,  at  least  in  their  actual  form,  do  not  always 
appear  to  be  more  ancient  than  the  village  communities — the  Serbian 
zadruga  than  the  Russian  mir.  In  fact,  the  former,  such  as  they  still  exist 
among  certain  Southern  Slavs,  presuppose  an  hereditary  appropriation  of 
the  soil  in  favor  of  certain  village  residents ;  in  this  sense  we  may  see  in 
them  an  advance  towards  individualization,  a  transition  stage  between  clan 
or  communal  property  and  personal  possession.  Moreover,  the  domain  of 
these  family  communities  is  usually  far  less  extensive  than  that  of  the  vil- 
lage communities,  and  the  number  of  members  far  less  considerable.  The 
Serbian  zadruga  numbers,  on  an  average,  between  ten  and  twenty-five 
members ;  those  with  fifty  or  sixty  are  exceptions.  When  the  zadruga 
grows  too  numerous,  it  usually  splits  itself  in  two.  There  are,  in  Serbian 
lands,  villages  that  bear  the  name  of  one  family,  and  the  inhabitants  of 
which  do  appear  to  be  descended  from  one  stock  ;  but  such  villages  almost 
always  consist  of  several  communities.  [See,  for  instance,  Custom-Law 
(Droit  Coutuinier)  of  the  Southern  Slavs,  after  Researches  by  Mr.  Bdgit- 
chitch,  by  F.  Dem^litch,  Paris,  1877.]  In  brief,  then,  a  Serbian  zadruga 
can,  by  successive  separations,  be  evolved  out  of  an  original  family  com- 
munity, whereas  it  could  scarcely  be  the  outcome  of  village  communi- 
ties,— while  the  Russian  mir,  by  splitting  itself  into  fractions,  may  very 
well  have  begot  family  communities,  very  similar  to  the  zadruga.  Such, 
indeed,  appears  sometimes  to  have  been  the  case.  (See  further  on, 
pp.  491-493.) 


488      THE  EMPIRE  OF  THE   TSARS  AND  THE  RUSSIANS. 

same  peaceable  revolution  which  has  severed  the  bond  between 
master  and  serf,  has  loosened  that  between  father  and  children. 
Together  with  liberty,  a  taste  of  independence  came  to  the  domes- 
tic hearth.  This  was  one  of  the  chief  and  most  natural  results  ;  it 
is  at  the  same  time  a  fact  which  cannot  but  react  on  the  commune, 
indeed  on  the  entire  material  and  moral  existence  of  the  mujik. 

The  father,  according  to  the  ancient  Russian  custom,  is  abso- 
lutely master  in  his  house,  like  the  tsar  in  the  nation,  or,  as  an  old 
saying  has  it,  hke  the  khan  in  Crimea.  To  find  anything  at  all 
analogous  in  the  West,  we  must  retrace  our  steps  back  beyond  the 
Middle  Ages,  to  classical  antiquity  and  paternal  authority  among 
the  Romans.  The  Russian  peasant  was  not  liberated  by  age 
from  his  father's  authority  ;  the  adult  and  married  son  was  still 
subject  to  it,  until  he  had  himself  children  arrived  to  years  of  dis- 
cretion, or  had  in  his  turn  become  the  head  of  the  family.  This 
domestic  sovereignty  remained  intact  through  all  the  revolutions, 
all  the  transformations  of  the  country.  L,ike  the  tsar,  the  father 
was  thought  to  hold  from  Heaven  a  sort  of  right  divine,  to  rebel 
against  which  would  have  been  sacrilege.  In  the  sixteenth  cen- 
tury, in  a  manual  on  domestic  economy,  entitled  Domostrby 
("House-Order"),  the  priest  Sylvester,  the  intimate  adviser  of 
Ivan  IV.,  extols  the  authority  of  the  head  of  the  house  and  his 
right  of  repression  not  only  over  the  children,  but  over  the  wife. 
In  the  nobility,  this  paternal  power  became  worn  and  blunted 
through  long  friction  against  the  West  and  modem  individualism  ; 
little  is  left  of  it  beyond  a  few  formalities,  such  as  the  graceful 
Slavic  custom  for  children  to  kiss  their  parents'  hand  after  meals. 
In  the  people,  i.e.,  the  peasantry  and  the  merchant  class,  the  old 
traditions  had  survived.  In  these  two  classes,  the  most  genuinely 
national  ones,  the  framework  of  family  was,  until  this  last  quarter 
of  the  nineteenth  century,  more  solidly  constructed  than  in  any 
other  European  country.  In  this  respect,  as  in  many  others, 
Russia  may  be  said  to  have  been,  till  very  lately,  the  antipodes 
of  the  United  States,  so  deep  was  the  chasm  dug  by  paternal 


MIR,   FAMILY,    AND  VILLAGE   COMMUNITIES.  489 

authority  between  two  families  based  on  equality  between  the 
children. 

In  the  Russian  people,  paternal  power  is  supported  by  religious 
feeling  and  reverence  for  age.  No  nation  has,  in  this  respect, 
upheld  more  faithfully  the  simple  and  beautiful  habits  of  another 
age.  The  Russian  of  the  lower  classes  greets  men  superior  to 
him  in  years  by  the  names  of  ' '  father  "  or  "  uncle  "  ;  at  all  times 
in  public  as  in  private,  he  treats  them  with  a  gentle  deference. 
This  feeling  was  until  quite  lately  the  foundation-stone  of  com- 
munal self-government.  ' '  Where  white  hairs  are,  there  is  good 
sense,  there  is  right  " — such  is,  with  variations,  the  burden  of  manj'^ 
popular  proverbs.  From  an  old  man — from  his  father  especially 
—the  Russian  peasant  used  submissively  to  endure  all  things. 
Two  rmijiks  were  out  on  a  Moscow  street  one  day — a  holiday, — one 
of  them  in  the  prime  of  maturity,  the  other  already  bent  under  the 
weight  of  years.  The  old  man,  who  appeared  somewhat  the 
worse  for  drink,  was  showering  abuse  on  his  companion,  and  even 
blows.  The  younger  and  vigorous  man  opposed  to  his  violence 
only  expostulation  and  entreaties,  and  on  some  people's  wanting 
to  separate  them,  said  :  ' '  lycave  us  ;  he  is  my  father. ' '  Such 
traits  are  by  no  means  rare.  The  trouble  is  that,  every  virtue 
being  apt  to  encourage  to  abuse  those  who  profit  by  it,  paternal 
authority  thus  pampered  frequently  degenerated  into  downright 
tyranny.  The  father,  coarse  and  unmannered,  with  the  double 
model  before  him  of  state  despotism  and  landlord's  despotism, 
lorded  it  in  his  cabin  as  a  veritable  autocrat ;  he  continually  trans- 
gressed the  natural  limits  of  his  rights,  and  the  son,  fashioned  to 
obedience  by  both  custom  and  servitude,  seldom  knew  how  to 
assert  his  own  or  his  wife's  dignity  as  human  beings.  Pater- 
nal power  but  too  often  got  hardened  by  contact  with  serfdom  ; 
no  wonder  that  the  emancipation  loosened  the  bond,  and  that 
young  couples,  liberated  from  a  master's  yoke,  should  wish  to  cast 
off  that  other  and  not  less  irksome  yoke. 

In  the  mujik's  patriarchal  domestic  scheme,  undivided  prop- 


490      THE  EMPIRE  OF   THE    TSARS  AND   THE  RUSSIANS. 

erty,  i.e.  community  of  possessions,  was  the  logical  sequence  of 
paternal  authority.*  Thus  the  family  can  be  regarded  as  an  eco- 
nomic association,  the  members  of  which  are  united  by  the  ties  of 
blood,  and  have  at  their  head,  in  the  capacity  of  chief  and  man- 
ager, the  father  or  "  elder,"  bearing  the  title  of  "  master  of  the 
house  "  {domokhozihiri)  or  "  senior  '\bolshhk).\ 

What  is  the  basis,  the  principle,  what  the  essential  character 
of  the  undivided  Great- Russian  peasant  family  ?  These  questions 
have  been  much  discussed.  It  has  been  asked  whether  it  was  a 
sort  of  association — or,  to  use  the  genuine  Russian  term,  oiartil — 
founded  before  all  on  economic  relations,  on  property  and  pecu- 
niary interests ;  or  whether,  on  the  contrary,  it  rests  in  the  peas- 
antry as  in  other  classes,  principally  on  personal  relations  created 
by  affection  and  sympathy,  on  blood  and  kinship.  J  To  this 
question  often  settled  too  peremptorily,  too  exclusively,  in  one  or 
the  other  sense,  the  best  solution  would  seem  to  be  that  the 
Great-Russian  familj-^  is  founded,  like  almost  every  other,  on  both 
principles,  and  that  one  or  the  other  becomes  predominant  accord- 
ing to  what  side  you  consider  it  from.  If  it  is  an  association,  it  is 
a  closed  one  into  which  there  is  no  entrance  except  through  birth 
or  marriage. 

Certain  it  is,  that,  in  the  peasant  class,  marriage  and  the  crea- 
tion of  a  new  household,  have  at  all  times  been  regulated  chiefly 
by  utilitarian  considerations.  In  no  other  country  perhaps  has 
personal  inclination  had  as  little  to  do  with  rural  marriages.  But 
is  Russia  the  only  country  where  such  cares — which,  after  all,  do 
not  necessaril}'^  exclude  relations  bom  of  sympathy  and  are  far 

*  Mr.  Le  Play,  in  his  Outrriers  EuropSens  (first  edition,  pp.  58  and  59), 
gives  a  complete  description  of  the  economic  system  on  which  a  Russian 
family  was  based  previous  to  the  emancipation.  In  the  same  work  is  fonnd 
a  similar  and  in  many  ways  analogous  description  of  a  Bashkir  family  on  the 
confines  of  Asia. 

t  Domokhozdtn,  from  dotn,  "  house,"  and  khoziain,  "master,  husband- 
man, administrator."     Bolshhk  from  bolshdy,  bdlshiy,  "big,  senior." 

X  The  former  opinion  is  the  more  generally  adopted  ;  still  the  latter  has 
been  repeatedly  supported  by  eminent  scholars. 


MIR,    FAMILY,   AND  VILLAGE   COMMUNITIES.  49 1 

from  invariably  banishing  domestic  affections — interfere  with  the 
foundation  of  the  family?  If  economic  considerations,  always 
particularly  powerful  in  the  country,  prevail  with  the  mujik  more 
than  with  other  classes,  that  is  a  consequence,  first  of  all,  of  the 
conditions  of  rural  life,  of  the  habits  bequeathed  by  serfdom,  of 
the  mir  system  and  collective  property, — all  things  which  impress 
on  the  union  between  man  and  woman  a  more  than  usually  ma- 
terialistic, practical  stamp.  Taken  all  in  all,  the  distinctive 
feature  of  the  Great- Russian  family  does  not  lie  there.  Elsewhere 
too — in  the  West  and  everywhere — the  family,  composed  of  father, 
mother,  and  children  in  their  nonage,  may  be  regarded  as  an  asso- 
ciation and  a  community.  The  distinctive  characteristic  of  the 
Great- Russian  family,  up  to  these  latter  times,  is  that,  instead  of 
being  habitually  limited  to  father,  mother,  and  unmarried  children, 
it  included  several  households  and  several  generations,  united  at 
once  by  the  bond  of  blood  and  that  of  common  interests.* 

It  often  happened  that  several  married  sons,  several  collateral 
households,  would  live  together  in  the  same  house,  or  round  the 
same  enclosure  or  yard — dvor — working  in  common  under  the 
authority  of  the  father  or  grandfather.  The  family  thus  became 
a  sort  of  commune  on  a  small  scale,  ruled  by  its  natural  chief, 
assisted  by  his  wife  for  the  indoor  management.!    The  principle 

*  The  Russian  economists,  who,  of  late  years,  have  much  agitated  these 
questions,  frequently  draw  a  distinction  between  two  types  of  peasant  fam- 
ilies: the  "great"  or  patriarchal  {bolshd,ya  or  rodovdya, — the  latter  from 
rod,  "race"=Latin  ^^«5),  and  the  "small"  or  "paternal"  {mhlaya  or 
otsbvskaya,  from  otsy,  "fathers") — the  family  in  the  narrower  sense.  And 
indeed,  both  types  are  to  be  found,  sometimes  side  by  side  in  the  same 
regions  ;  only,  contrary  to  what  used  to  be  in  old  times,  the  former  tends  to 
gp-ow  rarer.  But  between  these  two  forms  of  family  life  and  farming,  the 
passage  from  one  to  the  other  is  too  easy  and  frequent  to  warrant  their  being 
erected  into  two  opposite  types. 

t  To  the  head  of  the  household,  the  Russian  domokhozihin,  may  be 
compared  the  domd.tchin  or  head  of  the  Serbian  zadruga.  Indeed,  there  is 
between  the  Great-Russian  undivided  family  and  the  Yugo-Slavic  zadruga 
an  analogy  which  it  were  vain  to  deny.  It  has  been  proved  that  in  certain 
Russian  governments,  especially  in  those  of  Samdra  and  Kursk,  there 
recently  still  existed  family  communities  very  similar,  as  regards  their 


492      THE  EMPIRE  OF  THE   TSARS  AND   THE  RUSSIANS. 

of  election  asserted  itself  only  in  default  of  the  head  of  the  family. 
When  the  father  died,  his  place  was  taken,  in  the  order  of  patri- 
archal succession,  by  one  of  the  oldest  members,  the  brother,  or 
the  oldest  son,  according  to  local  custom.  Sometimes  it  was  the 
widow  who  took  the  management  of  the  house,  or  else — as  in  the 
mir  and  in  the  Serbian  zadniga,  the  elder  was  chosen  from  among 
the  members  of  the  family,  not  for  absolute  seniority  of  age  but  as 
being  the  most  capable,  the  most  respected.*  The  father  or  head 
of  the  house  had  full  authority  for  the  management  of  the  prop- 
erty belonging  to  the  community,  and  his  wife  for  the  direction 
of  operations  at  home.  Still,  in  large  families,  composed  of  sev- 
eral households,  it  was  usual  for  the  ' '  elder  * '  to  take  the  advice 
of  his  relatives  and  associates.  But  he  was  by  right  the  repre- 
sentative of  the  family  in  all  business  matters,  private  or  public, 
when  he  and  his  peers  formed  the  council  of  the  commune  ;  but 
even  there  he  took  his  seat  not  as  an  individual,  but  as  the  family 
representative. 

In  the  times  of  serfdom,  the  rural  family  loved  to  keep  close 
together,  t    Divisions  of  property  were  dreaded  ;  they  took  place 

organization  and  juridical  character,  to  the  zadruga,  which  itself  presents 
various  types.  The  family  communities  in  which  certain  Russian  scholars 
see  a  special  type  of  land  tenure,  which  they  call  "landed  property  consist- 
ing of  a  yard  or  house-lot,"  are  of  frequent  occurrence  among  the  peculiar 
small  class,  called  odnodvdrtsy  more  particularly  in  the  government  of 
Oridl. 

*  Such  was  the  case  in  a  family  of  the  government  of  Kursk  of  which  a 
special  study  has  been  published.  This  community,  known  under  the  name 
of  Sofrdnitch,  comprised,  in  1872,  forty-two  persons,  all  descendants — at  least 
the  men — of  one  common  ancestor,  deceased  sixty  years  before,  whose  sons 
having  died  in  their  turn,  the  grandchildren  and  great-grandchildren  had 
agreed  to  live  together  and  cultivate  their  lands  in  common,  under  the 
direction  of  one  of  their  number.  In  1872  the  family  consisted  of  eight 
married  couples,  two  widows,  and  over  twenty  young  people  and  children 
of  both  sexes.  They  all  resided  in  four  izb^s  built  round  the  same  dvor  or 
yard.  About  1876,  domestic  disasters,  especially  the  insanity,  then  death  of 
the '"elder"  who  had  ruled  them  through  forty  years,  caused  them  to  sep- 
arate into  four  groups,  each  of  which  still  formed  a  small  community. 

f  As  in  the  Serbian  zadruga,  the  house,  live  stock,  tools,  furniture,  and 
crops  belonged  to  the  community.  Nothing  was  left  for  individual  posses- 
sion except  articles  of  personal  use,  such  as  clothes  and  trinkets. 


MIR,  FAMILY,  AND  VILLAGE   COMMUNITIES.  493 

only  when  the  dwelling  with  its  yard  had  become  too  small  for  the 
number  of  inhabitants.  This  necessity  was  regarded  as  an  evil, 
and  the  division  of  the  small  patrimony  or  capital  went  by  the 
name  of  "black  division."  The  interest  of  the  landlord,  who 
was  bound  to  furnish  the  timber  and  other  materials  for  the  con- 
struction of  the  new  izbhs,  was  at  one  with  the  traditional  preju- 
dice against  the  separation  of  families.  Owing  to  these  customs, 
had  the  land,  redeemed  by  the  former  serfs,  been  definitely  allotted 
to  the  diflferent  households,  the  large  village  communities  would 
probably  have  been  succeeded  by  small  family  communities  after 
the  manner  of  the  Serbian  zadruga.  Now  that,  in  the  footsteps 
of  liberty,  the  spirit  of  individualism  and  independence  has  invaded 
the  dwelling  of  the  mujik,  if  the  collective  tenure  of  land  comes 
to  be  abrogated,  it  will  be  for  the  benefit  of  the  individual ;  the 
Russian  peasant  will  not  pass  through  the  intermediate  stage  at 
which  other  Slavic  peoples  have  stopped. 

In  a  house  in  which  property  remains  undivided,  it  is  not  so 
much  the  decease  of  members  of  the  family  which  opens  succes- 
sions, as  the  separation  of  the  living  which  becomes  the  occasion 
for  partitions.  The  rules  for  such  partitions  vary  according  to 
localities,  but  one  general  feature  is  that  only  men  or  widows 
with  young  children  are  considered.  The  married  daughters 
have  nothing  of  their  own,  being  regarded  as  belonging  to  their 
husbands'  families  ;  the  unmarried  daughters  can  claim  only  a 
portion  of  the  furniture  and  money,  sometimes  of  the  cattle,  cows, 
sheep,  etc.,  according  to  local  custom. 

Among  the  Great-Russians  as  well  as  among  the  I,ittle-Rus- 
sians,  in  the  wider  as  in  the  more  restricted  family,  the  women — 
especially  the  daughters — are  not  an  integral  part  of  the  family 
or  community  as  regards  property.  The  daughter  is  only  a 
temporary  inmate  of  her  father's  house,  which  she  is  to  leave  some 
day,  to  follow  a  husband.  The  wife  herself — the  consort — claims 
no  share  in  the  common  fund  even  while  she  has  the  internal 
management  of  the  conjugal  home.  If  sometimes  a  widow 
obtains  a  portion,  if  she  even  fills  the  place  of  the  head  of  the 


494      THE  EMPIRE  OF  THE   TSARS  AND  THE  RUSSIANS. 

house,  it  is  as  the  representative  of  her  unmarried  children. 
The  woman  really  has  no  claim  on  the  property  of  either  her 
father's  or  her  husband's  family.  As  a  Compensation,  she  is 
allowed  the  pri\'ilege,  denied  to  the  men,  of  saving  up  a  little 
hoard  of  her  own  outside  of  the  common  property,  on  the  flax  or 
wool  out  of  which  she  manufactures  her  husband's  and  children's 
clothing  ;  these  savings,  in  some  provinces,  go  by  the  name  of  her 
"box"  or  "casket"  {korbbkd).  This  casket,  the  keys  to  which 
the  women  alone  hold,  the  girl  takes  away  with  her  when  she 
marries :  it  is  her  dowry,*  When  a  woman  dies  childless,  her 
korbbka,  as  a  rule,  returns  to  her  own  family, — not  to  her  father 
or  his  community,  but  to  her  mother,  or,  if  she  be  dead,  to  her 
unmarried  sisters.  Thus  there  is  a  sort  of  feminine  line  of  suc- 
cession. The  mother's  money  and  clothes  usually  go  to  the 
unmarried  daughters,  and  if,  in  family  partitions,  custom  admits 
the  daughters'  claim  to  a  portion  of  the  house-gear  and  even  of 
the  live-stock,  the  reason  probably  is  that  these  things  are  regarded 
as  belonging  to  and  more  particularly  befitting  their  sex. 

In  speaking  of  family  partitions,  a  difference  should  be  made 
between  the  bona-Jide  partitions  of  the  whole  estate  among  all 
entitled  to  a  share  of  it,  and  the  dowering  of  a  member  on  his 
departure  out  of  the  community.  The  latter  is  the  case  when  a 
member  of  the  family,  a  son  for  instance,  leaves  the  house  in  his 
father's  lifetime  to  go  and  live  somewhere  else  by  himself.  The 
father,  then,  is  free  to  give  him  nothing,  to  let  him  go  '  *  with 
nothing  but  his  cross, ' '  as  the  popular  phrase  has  it — in  allusion 

*  Where  custom  allows  young  girls  to  save  for  themselves  a  kordbka, 
indirectly  raised  on  the  common  property,  it  is  usual  for  a  bridegroom,  who, 
indirectly  also,  is  to  benefit  by  this  same  kordbka,  to  pay  to  the  bride's 
family  a  certain  sum  as  compensation,  either  in  cash  or  nature.  This  con- 
tribution usually  defrays  the  wedding  feast,  an  item  which  mounts  up  con- 
siderably, all  the  way  from  20  to  80  roubles.  This  custom  must  not  be 
confounded  with  the  purchase-money  given  for  the  bride,  a  practice  which 
still  flourishes  in  some  parts  of  Russia,  among  Finn  or  Tatar  populations. 
(See  for  details  on  these  curious  customs  a  study  of  Mr.  Matv^yef,  in  the 
Memoirs  of  the  Imperial  Russian  Geographical  Society^  Ethnographical 
Section,  vol.  viii.,  part  ist,  1878.) 


MIR,   FAMILY,   AND  VILLAGE   COMMUNITIES.  495 

to  the  brass  or  silver  cross  worn  round  the  neck.  If,  however,  a 
married  son  leaves  with  his  father's  consent,  he  receives  his  share 
of  the  common  patrimony  ;  but  it  lies  with  the  father  to  determine 
what  that  share  shall  be.  There  even  are  diflferent  words,  at  least 
in  the  government  of  Samdra,  to  express  whether  the  departing 
son  receives  a  full  pro-rata  share  of  the  family  property  or  not. 
If  in  a  family  governed  by  the  eldest  brother,  one  of  the  younger 
unmarried  ones  chooses  to  settle  somewhere  else,  there  is  no  general 
partition.  But  there  necessarily  is,  if  it  is  a  married  brother  who 
goes,  i.  e.  a  man  possessed  of  full  rights  according  to  the  popular 
code.  Genuine  partitions  therefore  take  place  only  in  families 
bereaved  of  their  natural  head  and  composed  of  several  collateral 
households,  where  there  are  several  co-proprietors  possessed  of 
equal  rights  to  the  common  patrimony,  for  instance  married 
brothers  who  have  lost  their  father.  In  this  case,  the  property, 
real  and  personal,  is  divided  into  so  many  shares  of  equal  value 
which  are  frequently  adjudged  by  drawing  lots,  just  as  is  done  in 
the  mir  for  communal  lands.  The  married  grandsons  are  entitled 
to  a  share  only  if  their  father  is  dead,  because  the  rights  of 
children  lie  in  abeyance  during  the  father's  lifetime. 

It  is  easy  to  see  from  all  the  above  what  predominance  is  con- 
ferred on  the  father  and  his  authority,  and  also  how  great,  in  these 
rural  customs,  is  the  importance  that  attaches  to  marriage,  which 
takes  the  place  of  age-majority.  It  is,  in  a  way,  the  first  condi- 
tion under  which  is  held  the  right  to  succession,  or,  more  cor- 
rectly, to  property.  In  our  study  of  the  commime,  we  shall  soon 
see  that  marriage  is  usually  there  also  the  first  condition  for  using 
the  communal  lands.  The  reason  of  this  singular  custom  is  that  \ 
neither  in  the  home  nor  in  the  commune  can  a  man  be  a  complete  ' 
workman  unless  he  is  married,  and  can  place  at  the  community's 
service,  together  with  his  own  hands,  those  of  his  wife. 

In  a  certain  measure,  it  might  be  said  that  in  the  peasant  fam- 
ily— at  least  in  the  large,  patriarchal  family — there  is  no  succession 
or  inheritance  at  all,    but  only  dissolution   or  liquidation  of  an 


49^      THE  EMPIRE   OF   THE    TSARS  AND   THE  RUSSIANS. 

association,  each  member  of  which  is  invested  with  an  equal 
right  to  a  share  in  the  common  capital  and  stock-in-trade.  Though 
relationship  may  be  one  of  the  conditions  of  heredity,  blood  alone 
does  not  confer  a  right  to  the  inheritance :  association  with  the 
head  of  the  family  and  labor  for  the  benefit  of  the  community 
are  required  over  and  above  that.  The  only  sense  in  which  the 
term  ' '  succession' '  is  applicable  under  this  form  of  family  life,  is 
this :  that  the  father's  death  entitles  the  married  sons  to  claim  a 
share  in  the  common  patrimony. 

It  follows  from  all  this,  as  Mr.  Matv6yef  remarks,  that  testa- 
mentary dispositions  and  bequests  are  possible  in  families  in  the 
stricter  sense,  where  in  lieu  of  several  associates  having  equal 
rights  on  the  family  estate,  there  is  only  one  representative  of  the 
family  rights.  In  this  case,  the  father  or  the  mother — the  latter 
if,  being  widowed,  she  is  the  recognized  head  of  the  house — may, 
in  dying,  bequeath  legacies.  These  testamentary  dispositions, 
whether  made  in  writing  or  orally  declared  before  witnesses,  are 
usually  admitted  by  the  communes  and  peasant  courts,  the  more 
readily  that  the  common  people  pay  a  sort  of  religious  reverence 
to  last  dying  wishes  and  even  regard  opposition  to  them  as  sinful. 
The  number  of  such  wills  naturally  tends  to  increase  in  propor- 
tion to  the  dissolution  of  large  families.  By  them  the  father,  as  a 
rule,  merely  distributes  his  possessions  among  his  children,  so  as 
to  forestall  any  disputes  between  them.  If  bequests  are  made 
beyond  the  line  of  direct  heirs,  they  usually  are  in  favor  of  the 
widow,  sometimes  of  a  married  daughter  or  a  son  gone  out  of  the 
house,  or  perhaps  of  some  orphan  nephews  or  some  child  taken 
in  by  the  dying  man.  Custom,  however,  would  scarcely  permit, 
the  father  of  a  family  to  despoil  his  children  of  the  house  in 
which  they  were  born  and  of  their  entire  inheritance,  in  favor  of 
strangers  possessed  of  no  moral  title  to  his  estate.  How  ever 
great  his  respect  for  paternal  authority,  the  peasant  does  not  admit 
of  its  being  unlimited,  under  cover  of  what  is  elsewhere  known  by 
the  name  of  testamentary  liberty. 


MIRy  FAMILY,  AND  VILLAGE  COMMUNITIES.  497 

All  that  concerns  the  division  of  family  possessions,  as  also  all 
that  bears  on  the  allotment  of  lands  by  the  commune,  is  left  by 
law  to  custom,  to  tradition.  The  Statute  says  so  in  the  following 
explicit  words  :  ' '  The  peasants  are  authorized  as  regards  the 
order  of  succession  to  inheritances,  to  follow  the  local  customs. ' ' 
By  this  simple  little  clause,  the  rural  commune  is  placed  outside 
of  the  civil  law,  outside  of  all  written  law.* 

Such  liberty  is  in  keeping  with  the  nature  and  the  conditions 
of  self-government  which  distinguish  the  Russian  mir.  Yet 
these  excessive  private  rights  give  rise  to  so  much  opposition  that, 
in  an  epoch  of  transition  and  ethical  transformation  like  the 
present,  such  latitude  must  needs  lend  itself  to  abuses  and  in- 
justices. Accordinglj',  at  the  time  of  the  agricultural  inquest, 
enlightened  men,  of  most  dissimilar  tendencies,  such  as  the 
ex-Minister  of  the  Interior  and  of  the  Crown  Demesnes,  Mr. 
Val^yef,  and  Prince  Vassiltchikof,  requested  that  the  private  law 
of  the  peasants,  instead  of  being  entirely  left  to  custom,  might  be 
regulated  by  ofl&cial  legislation.  The  difl&culty  lay  in  avoiding  to 
do  violence  to  custom  while  regulating  its  exercise.  I<egal  usages 
vary  much,  according  to  provinces  and  communes,  according  even 
to  the  origin  of  the  population.  In  one  village,  for  instance,  it  is 
the  eldest  son  who,  in  case  of  division,  retains  the  homestead  ;  in 
another  again  it  is  the  youngest,  as  in  some  parts  of  Switzerland 
and  Germany,  because  it  is  supposed  that  the  oldest  had  opportu- 
nities of  settling  elsewhere  during  the  father's  lifetime.  In  treat- 
ing of  heredity  questions  among  the  peasants,  it  should  not  be 
forgotten  that  the  communal  lands,  although  they  do  not  directly 
fall  under  it,  are  obliquely  aflfected  by  these  family  partitions, 
which  usually  necessitate  the  allotment  of  separate  lands  to  the 
members  who  depart  out  of  the  family  community.  And,  though 
these  are  private  concerns  which  do  not  affect  the  general  distribu- 
tions of  land  among  all  the  members  of  a  commune,  there  are 

*A  law  of  the  present  Emperor's,  however,  passed  in  1886,  regulates 
snch  family  transactions  without  infringing  these  principles. 

3» 


498      THE  EMPIRE  OF  THE   TSARS  AND   THE  RUSSIANS. 

villages  where  a  family  cannot  divide  the  land  allotted  to  it  collec- 
tively without  the  commune's  consent. 

Such  divisions  are  no  longer  rare  nowadays.  Few  izbhs 
shelter  several  married  couples.*  Young  people,  especially  young 
wives,  wish  to  be  independent ;  newly  married  couples  take  delight 
in  feeling  themselves  the  heads  of  a  household,  the  only  position 
which  gives  them  complete  liberty.  This  spirit,  seemingly  in 
opposition  with  the  system  of  communal  land  tenure,  sometimes 
finds  in  it  an  encouragement,  for  it  is  precisely  under  this  system 
that  each  man  or  each  couple  can  claim  a  lot.  On  the  other  hand, 
the  construction  of  a  wooden  house  costs  comparatively  little ; 
every  Russian  is  a  born  carpenter,  every  peasant  can,  in  a  few 
days,  build  a  dwelling  for  himself.  So  that  the  number  of  new 
izbcLs  has  increased  considerably  since  the  emancipation  ;  to  be 
sure  they  are  generally  smaller  and  poorer.  This  increase  of 
dvors  or  separate  homesteads  is  valued  at  25  j^  or  30  5^  at  least. f 
This  breaking  up  of  families,  though  merely  an  indirect  conse- 
quence of  the  emancipation,  seems  to  be  one  of  the  main  causes 
of  the  apparently  inconsiderable  results  it  has  produced,  of  the 
scant  progress  made  by  agriculture  and  prosperity  in  numbers  of 
provinces.  These  divisions,  now  of  frequent  occurrence,  bring 
about  two  complications  almost  equally  hard  on  agriculture  and 
popular  prosperity.  The  first  is  the  excessive  parcelling  of  the 
land,  caused  by  separating  the  small  lots  afiected  by  the  commune 
to  the  support  of  one  family  ;  the  second  consists  in  disabling  the 
peasant  from  working  the  soil  to  its  full  bearing  capacity,  owing 
to  the  indefinite  division  of  capital,  stock,  and  tools.  If  the  mir 
furnishes  the  land,  it  does  not  advance  the  means  of  tilling  it.     In 

*  Statistics  show  that,  to  every  23,000,000  "  souls  "  (male  peasants  sub- 
ject to  the  poll-tax),  there  were,  only  a  few  years  ago,  7,220,000  dvors  or 
homesteads,  i.e.  on  an  average,  taking  into  consideration  the  increase  of  the 
population  since  the  last  census,  seven  or  eight  persons  to  the  dvor,  which, 
Russian  families  being  usually  prolific,  generally  represents  one  household. 

t  In  some  governments,  such  as  that  of  Tver,  the  number  of  the  dvors 
or  izbhs  is  said  to  have  nearly  doubled  in  ten  years. 


MIR,   FAMILY,   AND  VILLAGE   COMMUNITIES.  499 

this  manner  the  disadvantages  inherent  to  the  communal  system 
are  still  more  aggravated  by  family  partitions.  The  peasants 
themselves  admit  that  this  new  fashion  usually  does  harm,  but 
give  in  to  it,  because  it  is  getting  to  be  the  fashion. 

It  is  thus  that  the  decadence  of  the  old  patriarchal  ways  may 
indirectly  retard  the  progress  of  the  peasants  towards  prosperity 
and  even  national  production.  Among  these  peasant-landlords, 
impoverished  by  successive  divisions,  a  great  many  households 
are  almost  wholly  destitute  of  cattle  and  laboring  implements. 
The  depositions  of  the  great  agricultural  inquest  almost  unani- 
mously deplore  this  tendency  of  the  peasants  towards  isolation,* 
It  was  to  remedy  these  disadvantages  by  subjecting  family  parti- 
tions to  legal  restrictions  that  the  inquest  commission  suggested 
that  the  possessions  of  a  family,  and  especially  their  agricultural 
implements,  should  be  shared  with  departing  members  only 
within  limits  determined  by  the  law.  The  ministry  more  directly 
concerned  with  the  peasant  affairs,  that  of  Crown  Demesnes,  more 
than  once  went  into  this  question.  Thus,  for  instance,  it  was 
proposed  to  authorize  partitions  only  if  there  were  no  arrears  of 
taxes,  and  if  the  separation  left  to  each  member  a  lot  of  an  extent 
sufficient  for  remunerative  cultivation.  There  was  some  talk  of 
giving  to  the  parents  or  to  the  head  of  the  house  the  right  of 
authorizing  or  forbidding  the  operation  instead  of  leaving  it,  as 

*  This  commission,  convoked  on  the  proposal  and  under  the  presidency 
of  the  ex-Minister  of  Crown  Demesnes,  Mr.  Val^yef,  was  composed  of  high 
functionaries  from  the  ministries  of  the  Interior,  of  Demesnes,  and  of 
Finances.  The  principal  object  of  their  investigations,  conducted  and 
directed  with  the  assistance  of  an  extensive  list  of  queries,  was  the  study  of 
collective  land-tenure  and  its  eflfects.  The  commission  received  and  pub- 
lished about  a  thousand  reports  and  written  depositions,  besides  oral  ones 
from  over  two  hundred  persons,  mostly  governors  of  provinces,  marshals  of 
the  nobility,  members  of  the  provincial  assemblies,  etc.  Unfortunately,  |out 
of  so  many  witnesses,  few  are  peasants  or  rural  functionaries,  men  directly 
concerned  in  that  mode  of  property  which  is  being  investigated.  In  spite  of 
the  high  intelligence  and  impartiality  demanded  of  the  compilers  of  reports, 
the  absence  of  such  naturally  indicated  representatives  of  the  rural  commu- 
nities partly  weakens  the  commission's  conclusions. 


500      THE  EMPIRE  OF  THE   TSARS  AND   THE  RUSSIANS. 

done  at  present,  to  local  custom.  However  pressing  the  interests 
of  agriculture  and  of  the  peasant  himself,  it  were  difficult  to 
impose  such  restrictions  without  encroaching  on  the  liberty  but 
just  restored  to  him,  without  again  placing  the  individual  under 
the  yoke  of  the  family,  the  commune,  or  the  central  admin- 
istration.* 

Not  that  this  new  tendency  to  individualism  should  be  uncon- 
ditionally deplored.  Disturbing  as  it  is  economically,  it  has  some 
undoubtedly  good  sides :  it  compels  young  people  to  rely  more 
on  their  own  powers,  and,  by  stimulating  individual  energy,  may 
increase  the  sum  of  labor.  It  affords  advantages  especially 
as  regards  health  and  morality.  Among  coarse,  poverty-stricken 
people,  the  patriarchal  system  is  not  all  profit  and  virtue.  It  is 
notorious  how  many  evils  of  all  description,  in  the  great  cities  of 
the  West,  are  derived  from  the  closeness  and  overcrowding  of 
tenements.  Things  are  no  better  in  Russia  when  one  small 
izbcL  shelters  several  generations  and  several  households,  when, 
through  the  long  nights  of  an  endless  winter,  fathers  and  their 
children,  brothers  and  their  wives,  lie  promiscuously  huddled 
together  around  the  huge  stove.  Such  a  promiscuity  is  as  un- 
wholesome to  the  morals  as  to  the  body.  Even  when  the  mar- 
ried children  occupied  several  izbhs  disposed  around  the  one  yard, 
the  domestic  autocracy  was  a  danger  to  the  family's  union  and 
chastity  ;  the  head  of  the  house,  ' '  the  old  man  "  who,  owing  to  the 
custom  of  early  marriages,  might  be  scarcely  forty,  often  arroga- 
ting to  himself  certain  seignorial  rights  over  the  women  of  his 
family,  in  imitation  of  the  noble  landlord's  ways  with  the  serf  girls 
and  women  on  his  domains.  Nowadays,  young  couples  can  more 
easily  escape  this  paternal  rule,  and  family  life  becomes  purer 
through  isolation. 

*  By  the  terms  of  the  law  of  1886,  partitions  can  no  longer  take  place 
except  with  the  consent  of  the  head  of  the  family,  and  they  must  besides  be 
approved  by  at  least  two  thirds  of  the  communal  vote.  Moreover,  the 
administrative  reform  of  1889  places  them  under  the  control  of  "  rural 
chiefs  " — functionaries  elected  from  among  the  local  landed  nobility. 


MIR,   FAMILY,  AND  VILLAGE  COMMUNITIES.  50I 

The  old  patriarchal  manners  also  contributed  as  much  as  serf- 
dom to  the  abasement  of  women,  whose  subordinate  condition  is 
the  ugly  side  of  popular  life  in  Russia.  In  the  higher  classes  the 
woman  is,  in  culture,  bringing  up,  and  manners,  the  man's  equal ; 
in  fact  she  often  is,  or  seems,  superior  to  him.  With  the  popular 
classes — peasants  and  tradesmen — the  case  is  reversed.  In  noth- 
ing does  the  moral  dualism  still  existing  between  Peter's  Russia  and 
old  Moscovia  manifest  itself  more  clearly.  The  common  people 
have  retained  the  ideas  and  habits  of  old-time  Russia,  and  it  is 
this  side  of  their  life  on  which  Asiatic,  or  rather  Byzantine  influ- 
ences have  left  the  deepest  impress.  The  ill-treatment  and  con- 
tempt under  which  women  lived  were  among  the  things  that 
most  shocked  foreign  travellers  down  to  the  eighteenth  century, 
from  the  German  Herberstein,  who  was  the  first  to  reveal  to  Eu- 
rope the  inner  life  of  Moscovia,  to  the  French  academician  Chappe 
d'Auteroche,  whose  assertions  the  Empress  Catherine  II.  herself 
took  the  trouble  to  refute.*  There  are  a  great  many  popular 
sayings  on  the  subject  of  wife-beating,  some  of  them  purporting 
to  be  spoken  by  women,  such  as  :  "A  good  husband's  blows  do  not 
hurt  long,"  and  the  popular  songs  are  full  of  references  to  the 
same  custom. f  Peasant  husbands  have  not  relinquished  this 
patriarchal  prerogative,  especially  when  tipsy,  and  the  father-in- 
law,  until  quite  lately,  joined  in  with  his  stick.  Justice  now  tries 
to  protect  the  women,  but  has  not  always  the  power.  With  such 
customs  it  is  out  of  the  question  to  make  of  wife-beating  a  serious 
offence,  entailing  separation.  The  mujik  still  finds  it  diflScult  to 
grasp  the  idea  that  anybody  should  have  any  business  to  dispute 
his  right  of  chastising  the  wife  of  his  bosom.  A  peasant,  cited 
before  the  justice  of  the  peace  for  this  offence,  kept  repeating  in 

*  In  The  Antidote,  or  an  Examination  of  the  Evil  Book  entitled 
"  Travels  in  Siberia,''^  a  work  ascribed  to  theTsaritsa  herself. 

t  *'  I  went  along  with  my  true  love  dear — And  to  my  love  I  said  :  '  O, 
darling  dear  ! — Beat  not  thy  wife  without  a  cause, — But  only  for  good  cause, 
beat  thou  thy  wife, — And  for  a  great  ofiFence. — Far  away  is  my  father  dear, 
— And  farther  still  my  mother  dear ; — They  cannot  hear  my  voice, — they 
cannot  see  my  burning  tears.'  " — Ralston,  Songs  0/  the  Russian  People,  p.  11. 


502      THE  EMPIRE  OF   THE   TSARS  AND   THE  RUSSIANS. 

reply  to  all  reproofs  :  "  Why,  she  is  my  own." — "  Whom,  then, 
is  one  to  beat  ? ' '  inquired  another  after  listening  to  a  lecture  on  the 
respect  due  to  women.  Acquitted  or  fined,  it  is  on  his  wife,  in  the 
end,  that  the  delinquent  lets  out  his  wrath  at  the  interference  of 
justice. 

In  Great-Russia,  the  wife  has  not  yet  quite  got  beyond  being 
regarded  as  a  domestic  animal,  Bielinsky  tells  us.  What  the  peas- 
ant seeks  in  his  helpmate  first  of  all,  if  not  exclusively,  is  a  good 
workwoman.  In  some  provinces  at  least  among  the  "  allogens," 
or  aliens  of  Finn  and  Tatar  origin,  such  as  the  Mordvins  of  the 
Volga,  the  peasant  still  buys  his  wife  ;  at  times  he  carries  her  away 
— "steals"  her  is  the  word, — often,  without  consulting  or  even 
knowing  her,  as  she  is  from  another  village.  In  Little-Russia, 
family  life  has  more  of  the  humane  element ;  aflfection  plays  a 
greater  part  in  wedlock,  the  woman's  lot  is  a  milder  one,  she 
enjoys  more  consideration  and  has  more  rights.  This  diflference 
may  be  partly  due  to  the  gentler  Maloross  character,  to  the  milder 
.climate,  and  purer  Slavic  blood  ;  but  especially  to  the  fact  that 
serfdom  not  having  lasted  so  long  in  lyittle-Russia,  it  has  not 
hardened  the  people's  manners  to  the  same  extent,  and  that  the 
Maloross  peasant  woman,  instead  of  being  subject  to  the  often  heavy 
rule  of  a  father-  and  mother-in-law  in  a  large  agglomerated  family, 
usually  keeps  house  by  herself  for  her  husband  and  children. 

Still,  even  in  Little- Russia,  the  women's  lot  is  far  from  being  an 
enviable  one  and  only  appears  so  by  comparison.  On  the  Dniepr  as 
well  as  on  the  Volga,  the  husband  still  looks  on  his  wife  as  on  an 
inferior  being.  Hence  the  popular  songs  bear  many  a  trace  of 
the  pain  which  the  woman  habitually  smothers  in  her  breast,  and 
the  so-called  "  wedding  songs  "  of  both  North  and  South,  those 
rhythmical  poems  with  chorus,  a  rudimentarj'^  musical  drama 
enacted  by  the  bride  and  the  various  personages  who  take  part  in 
the  event,  invariably  show  us  the  bride  full  of  sadness  and  fear. 
True,  most  of  these  songs  date  back  to  times  when  she  had 
reason  to  tremble  before  "the  alien  robber,"   the  Tatar  or  the 


MIR,   FAMILY,  AND  VILLAGE  COMMUNITIES.  503 

Lithuanian,  who  came  to  take  or  buy  her  from  her  people. 
But  even  in  the  latest  of  these  popular  poems,  whether  born  in 
Great- or  Little-Russia,  or  in  the  freer  Cosack-land,  the  maiden 
in  touching  strains  gives  vent  to  her  grief  at  leaving  her 
father's  house,  even  though  life  was  not  always  made  very  easy 
to  her  there,  at  exchanging  her  girlish  liberty  for  the  matron's 
subjection.  Always  life  before  marriage  is  extolled  as  a  woman's 
best  time.  Serfdom,  of  course,  greatly  embittered  her  lot,  for  on 
her  head  fell  the  weight  of  a  double  bondage.  And  so  heavy  is 
the  yoke  at  times,  that  to  this  day  many  a  peasant  woman  frees 
herself  from  it  by  killing  her  tyrant.  This  crime  is  by  no  means 
uncommon,  and  the  woman  is,  more  often  than  not,  acquitted  by  a 
compassionate  jury  who  knows  what  she  has  gone  through. 

But  a  better  time  is  dawning.  The  emancipation  is  not  for 
man  alone.  Already  in  the  villages,  the  mother  of  adult  children, 
especially  the  widow  of  the  head  of  a  family,  enjoys  very  substan- 
tial respect ;  such  a  widow  is  often  entrusted  with  the  management 
of  the  family  aflFairs,  and  sometimes,  in  the  communal  assemblies, 
women  represent  their  absent  husbands.  In  this,  as  in  everything, 
education  will  do  much  ;  the  progress  of  individualism  will  have 
a  great  share  in  elevating  woman's  condition,  for  it  fosters,  in  both 
sexes,  the  feeling  of  personal  dignity.  Once  alone  with  her  hus- 
band and  children,  she  will  more  easily  become  the  companion 
and  equal  of  the  one,  the  guardian  and  teacher  of  the  others.* 

Will  the  spirit  of  independence  and  individualism,  which  is 
undermining  the  patriarchal  family,  end  b\^  reaching  collective 
property  ?     Is  the  Russian  commune  of  sufficiently  solid  grain  to 

*  The  popular  songs  depict  in  graphic  terms  the  irksomeness,  to  young 
matrons,  of  life  in  larger  agglomerated  families.  Here  is  a  brief  speci- 
men :  "  They  are  making  me  marry  a  lout — With  no  small  family. — Oh  ! 
— oh — oh  !  Oh,  dear  me  ! — With  a  father  and  a  mother — And  four  brothers 
— And  sisters  three. — Oh — oh — oh  !  Oh,  dear  me  ! — Says  my  father-in-law  : 
'  Here  comes  a  bear ! ' — Says  my  mother-in-law  :  '  Here  comes  a  slattern  ! ' — 
My  sisters-in-law  cry  :  '  Here  comes  a  do-nothing ! ' — My  brothers-in-law 
exclaim  :  *  Here  comes  a  mischief-maker ! ' — Oh — oh — oh  !  Oh,  dear  me !  " — 
Ralston,  Songs  of  the  Russian  People,  p.  289. 


504      THE  EMPIRE  OF  THE   TSARS  AND    THE  RUSSIANS. 

resist  this  active  dissolvent,  which,  by  attacking  the  old  customs 
and  paternal  authority,  cuts  out  the  core  of  despotic  communism  in 
the  family  ?  Family  and  commune,  domestic  life  and  public  life, — 
the  life  of  the  mir, — had  one  and  the  same  basis,  principle,  and 
spirit ;  it  is  impossible  that  the  alterations  which  the  one  under- 
goes should  not  react  on  the  other.  Anything  that  weakens 
traditions  and  popular  customs  must  also  weaken  the  village  com- 
munities, in  which  all  rests  on  custom  and  tradition.  The  man 
who  has  freed  himself  from  the  paternal  yoke,  will  soon  want  to 
slip  that  of  the  commune.  He  who  is  tired  of  remaining  a  boy 
forever  in  the  house,  will  not  like  being  always  a  minor  before  the 
mir;  he  who  finds  family  solidarity  irksome,  will  promptly  grow 
tired  of  the  solidarity  imposed  by  the  commune.  The  spirit  of  in- 
dependence is,  of  its  nature,  a  thing  that,  once  it  has  entered  a 
certain  sphere,  is  not  to  be  shut  up  within  it :  close  the  house  as 
you  will,  it  will  find  a  way  out  to  spread  abroad. 

If  the  commune  is  to  survive  the  transformation  it  is  undergo- 
ing at  present,  it  must  cease  to  oppress  the  individual,  it  must  leave 
full  liberty  to  persons.  The  ancient  agrarian  system's  only  chance 
lies  in  adapting  itself  to  the  demands  of  modem  individualism. 
Now,  is  the  Moscovite  mir  capable  of  this  ?  The  communism  of 
the  patriarchal  family  necessarily  implies  the  solidarity  of  the  mem- 
bers ;  there  lies  one  of  the  reasons  of  the  dying  out  of  the  Serbian 
zadruga  and  the  family  communities  among  the  southern  Slavs. 
Is  this  the  case  in  the  same  measure  with  the  village  communities  ? 
In  our  age  of  individual  liberty  and  ardent  competition,  between 
nations  as  between  men,  an  economic  or  political  institution  can, 
in  truth,  exist  only  on  two  conditions,  narrowly  connected  :  not 
to  interfere  with  individual  liberty,  and  not  to  hinder  national  pro- 
duction. A  study  of  the  manner  in  which  land  is  divided  and 
used  under  the  control  of  the  mir  will  show  us  what  are,  in  both 
these  respects,  the  eflfec^  and  the  defects  of  the  Russian  rural 
commune  system. 


BOOK  VIII.     CHAPTER  III. 

Village  Communities  :  Manner  of  Division  and  Allotments — Large  Com- 
munities and  Free  Use  of  Vacant  Lots — The  Mir  of  the  Present  Day  and 
Periodical  Re-allotments — Division  by  "  Souls  "and  hyTihglos — Epochs 
of  Division  ;  Disadvantages  of  Frequent  Re-allotments — A  Portion  of 
the  Defects  Charged  to  the  Mir  Due  to  the  Large  Agglomerated  Villages 
— Consequences  of  Excessive  Parcelling. 

At  the  times  when  population  was  more  sparsely  distributed 
than  it  is  now,  the  Russian  communities,  at  present  limited  to 
mere  villages,  were  able  sometimes  to  cover  much  more  ex- 
tensive tracts  of  land.  Such  instances  are  still  to  be  encountered 
at  both  extremities  of  Russia — in  the  north,  in  the  government  of 
016nets,  on  the  confines  of  Finland,  and  in  the  south,  amongst  the 
Cosacks  of  the  Ural,  Great-Russians  by  descent,  mostly  old- 
believers  by  religion,  and  as  much  attached  to  the  old  customs  as 
to  the  old  rites.  There,  by  the  river  Ural,  a  vast  commune  has 
existed  down  to  our  own  time,  covering  an  entire  extensive  geo- 
graphical region  ;  there  a  whole  army,  sole  proprietor  of  the  soil 
it  occupied,  formed  one  undivided  community.  Here  was  to  be 
found,  nearly  intact,  in  the  nineteenth  century,  the  form  of  prop- 
erty and  usufruct  of  the  tribe  or  clan  of  prehistoric  ages.* 

Immense  steppes,  but  moderatel)'  fertile  and  almost  desert,  to 

say  the  truth, — a  space  of  nearly  27,000.000  acres, — composed  the 

collective  property  of  the  Cosacks  of  the  Ural.     Along  the  entire 

*  Haxthausen  {Studien,  vol.  iii.,  pp.  153-162)  gives  a  description  of  the 
regulations  under  which  these  Cosacks  lived  prior  to  the  recent  reforms  and 
the  invasion  of  individual  property,  gradually  introduced  to  favor  the  offi- 
cers in  consequence  of  the  constitution  of  a  military  hierarchy,  opposed 
both  in  origin  and  spirit  to  the  local  Cosack  traditions. 

505 


5o6      THE  EMPIRE  OF  THE    TSARS  AND  THE  RUSSIANS. 

course  of  the  river  Ural  or  Yaik,  which  has  been  made  the  con- 
ventional boundary  between  Europe  and  Asia,  there  was  not  yet,  in 
the  middle  of  the  present  century,  a  single  lot  of  land  belonging  to 
any  individual  man,  nor  even  to  a  town  or  stanitsa,  as  the  villages 
are  called,  which  are  also  administrative  and  military  centres  of 
Cosack  districts.  The  system  of  usufruct  was  common  as  well  as 
that  of  proprietorship.  On  a  day  fixed  by  the  ataman,  at  a  signal 
given  by  the  ofl&cers  of  each  stanitsa,  haymaking  began  on  the 
meadows  along  the  rivers.  All  the  men  bearing  the  name  of  Cosacks 
went  to  work  simultaneously.  First,  each  one  cut  with  his  scythe, 
in  the  tall  grass,  a  line  enclosing  the  lot  which  was  to  be  his  to  mow, 
and  all  the  land  that  had  in  this  manner  been  appropriated  by  a  Co- 
sack  became  his  by  right — he  could  then  mow  it  at  his  ease,  with 
his  family.  In  this  vast  community,  the  land  as  the  water,  the 
meadows  and  arable  fields  as  the  fisheries  on  the  sea  or  the  rivers, 
were  common  property  and  worked  after  the  same  manner,  all 
starting  at  the  same  moment,  by  order  and  under  the  supervision 
of  the  chiefs,  but  every  one  working  for  himself — for  this  common 
proprietorship  and  common  usufruct  had  nothing  to  do  with  the 
system  of  equal  remuneration  preached  by  certain  socialists. 
Notwithstanding  this  important  restriction,  such  a  system,  from 
the  moment  that  the  inhabitants  are  numerous  enough  for  the 
products  of  the  soil  to  become  the  subject  of  dispute,  leaves  little 
liberty  to  individual  action  ;  it  leads  to  despotic  democracy  or  to 
bureaucratic  regulations.  That  it  could  survive  to  our  days  on 
the  banks  of  the  Ural,  was  only  owing  to  the  military  organization 
of  the  Cosacks. 

In  the  steppes  of  the  south,  as  in  the  forests  of  the  north,  the 
existence  of  these  vast  communities,  where  periodical  re-allot- 
ments were  unknown,  depended  first  of  all  on  the  productiveness 
of  the  soil  and  the  scarcity  of  labor.  As  population  increased, 
the  rights  of  each  member  had  to  be  defined  more  strictly,  the 
lands  had  to  be  assigned  to  each  village  and  distributed  among  the 
inhabitants.     In  the  more  recently  colonized  regions,  the  time  is 


MIR,   FAMILY,   AND  VILLAGE  COMMUNITIES.  507 

still  remembered  by  many  when  the  use  of  the  soil  was  not  con- 
fined within  such  narrow  limits.  With  the  Cosacks  of  the  Don  as 
well,  the  time  is  not  so  far  removed  when  every  Cosack  was  free 
to  take  possession  of  any  vacant  piece  of  steppe-land.  In  the 
government  of  Samdra,  on  the  eastern  bank  of  the  Volga,  old 
men  recall  the  time  when  every  man  could  cut  as  much  hay  as 
would  make  a  wagon-load. 

Similar  customs  still  survive  in  sundry  of  the  thankless  north- 
em  regions,  the  rough  climate  and  meagre  soil  of  which  oflFer  but 
few  attractions  to  colonists.  This  is  seen  especially  in  Siberia, 
where  it  often  happens  that  the  meadow-lands  alone  are  divided, 
while  of  the  arable  lands  each  man  works  as  much  as  he  is  able. 
In  the  region  north  of  the  Ladoga  and  On^ga  lakes,  in  the  chill 
wastes  of  the  government  of  016nets,  the  proportion  of  individual 
usufruct  depends  entirely  on  the  amount  of  efficient  work  accom- 
plished by  individuals  or  families.  Each  peasant  is  free  to  culti- 
vate as  much  land  as  his  strength  permits  him,  or  the  number  of 
hands  he  disposes  of ;  all  he  has  to  do  is  to  indicate  by  some  sign, 
generally  a  notch  on  the  trees,  the  spot  he  has  selected.  This 
form  of  land  tenure  is  usually  allied  in  the  province  of  016nets, 
to  the  system  of  vast  communities  comprising  ofttimes  whole  dis- 
tricts. The  reason  is  simple.  The  dwellers  in  one  and  the  same 
valley  form  together  a  community  whose  domain  extends,  between 
forests,  along  a  river  or  a  lake.  The  traditional  boundaries  of 
these  immense  communal  tracts  have  repeatedly  been  traced,  less 
in  view  of  agricultural  achievements,  than  for  the  sake  of  the 
fisheries  which  represent  the  most  unfailing  resource  of  these 
otherwise  disinherited  wastes. 

In  the  district  of  Olbnets,  each  community  numbers,  on  an 
average,  a  score  of  villages  and  hamlets,  grouped  in  vblosts — 
cantons — around  one  large  village  which  often  gives  its  name 
to  the  others,  the  latter  regarding  themselves  as  its  colonies  or 
oflFspring.  A  single  one  of  these  rural  syndicates  comprises,  it  is 
said,  over  one  hundred  villages   and   owns  550,000  acres  with 


508       THE  EMPIRE   OF   THE   TSARS  AND    THE  RUSSIANS. 

about  40  miles  of  meadow-land  on  the  river  Svir.  We  learn  from 
recent  researches  that  these  associations  of  numerous  villages  into 
huge  communities,  or,  to  put  it  more  correctly,  this  system  of 
appropriation  of  the  soil  in  vast  tracts,  with  the  right  for  the 
hamlets  and  families  of  freely  helping  themselves  to  the  land, 
appears  to  have  been  formerly  in  almost  universal  use.  In  this 
case  an  investigation  of  the  facts  and  historical  documents  but 
confirms  what  theory  would  make  us  surmise. 

The  village  federations  of  016nets  are  the  last  remnants  of 
those  huge  communities  which  can  no  longer  subsist  in  any  but 
half-desert  countries,  where  agriculture  itself  still  holds  a  very 
subordinate  place.  The  Russian  communities  of  the  present  day 
are  generally  limited  to  one  village,  where  the  custom  of  working 
the  land  in  common,  for  the  good  of  all,  or  each  for  himself,  has 
long  become  an  anomaly.  In  the  remote  regions,  there  still  may 
exist  a  few  commons  where  the  products  of  the  soil  and  of  labor 
are  divided  among  the  co-proprietors.  Such  a  state  of  things 
may  be  met  with  in  a  few  dissident  (raskblnik)  villages  or  out  of  the 
way  settlements  ;  but  even  there  it  shotdd  be  ascribed  not  so  much 
to  the  persistency  of  ancient  usages  as  to  religious  influences  and 
the  communistic  spirit  of  monastic  associations.* 

With  the  Russian  mir,  as  a  rule,  the  pasture-lands  and  woods 
alone  remain  undivided.  Unfortunately  these  two  kinds  of  lands 
represent  but  an  insignificant  proportion  of  the  communal  lands. 
In  this  country  so  rich  in  forests,  where  wood  is  used  so  freely, 
the  villages  best  provided  with  lands,  do  not,  most  of  the  time, 
own  either  a  patch  of  forest  or  a  stick  of  timber.  The  reason  of 
this  anomaly  is  very  simple.  In  the  times  of  serfdom,  the  peasant 
was  generally  allowed  for  his  regtdar  use  only  ctdtivated  lots, 
with  the  addition  of  a  few  lots  of  pasture  and  meadow.  The 
Emancipation  Act  merely  aimed  at  vindicating  for  him,  as  his  full 

*  Several  of  the  more  extreme  dissident  sects  {raskdl)  have  very  pro- 
nounced socialistic  tendencies  ;  one  actually  bears  the  name  of  "  Commu- 
nists "  and  orders  that  all  property  shall  be  in  common.  (See  VoLIII.  of  this 
work,  Book  in.,  Chap.  IX.) 


MIR,   FAMILY,   AND  VILLAGE   COMMUNITIES.  509 

property,  the  land  of  which  he  had  had  the  usufruct ;  and,  in  the 
application  of  the  agrarian  regulations,  the  peasants  frequently 
were  defrauded  of  part  of  those  lands  which  they  used  for  pas- 
ture. The  woods,  where  they  are  not  the  property  of  the  State, 
were  left  to  the  former  landlord,  a  thing  the  more  to  be  regretted 
that,  originally,  the  peasant  was  to  have  the  use  of  the  forests  and 
that,  prior  to  the  emancipation,  he  was  generally  allowed  to  get 
his  timber  from  the  master's  woods. 

This  evidently  is  one  of  the  weak  sides  of  the  new  agrarian 
system  and  the  liquidation  of  serfdom  as  it  has  been  enacted.  It 
would  have  been  much  to  Russia's  advantage  had  she,  as  has  been 
done  in  other  countries,  secured  to  the  rural  communes  the  pro- 
prietorship of  a  portion  of  her  vast  forests,  with  the  proviso  that 
communal  woods  should  be,  as  in  France,  subject  to  strict  govern- 
ment control.  Such  a  system  is  entirely  favorable  to  the  forests, 
and  free  from  all  the  drawbacks  it  presents  when  applied  to  arable 
lands.  That  might  have  been  an  efficient  way  of  preventing  the 
too  rapid  denudation  of  the  country  with  all  the  evils  it  entails. 
By  leaving  the  forests  to  the  former  landlord,  a  double  damage 
has  been  indirectly  inflicted  on  the  forest  wealth  of  the  empire, 
consequently  on  its  entire  rural  economy,  and  even,  in  a  measure, 
on  the  soil  and  the  climate,  which  both  deteriorate  through  defor- 
estation, the  pomiSsh-tchik,  impoverished  by  the  emancipation, 
had  a  double  incentive  to  cut  down  the  woods  left  in  his  posses- 
sion ;  it  was  for  him  the  surest  way  of  making  money,  and,  at  the 
same  time,  of  opposing  the  depredations  of  the  peasants,  insuffi- 
ciently repressed  by  the  police  and  by  the  laws.  It  is  not  too  much 
to  say  that,  for  having  failed  to  protect  the  woods  against  the 
rapacity  of  the  want-ridden  landlord  and  the  plunderous  propen- 
sities of  the  mujik,  the  emancipation  may  be  taxed  with  having 
helped  to  bring  about  the  devastation  of  the  forests,  so  manifold 
and  unforeseen  have  been  the  consequences  of  the  great  reform.* 

*In  the  kingdom  of  Poland,  on  the  contrary,  the  right  of  usufruct  en- 
joyed by  the  peasant  over  the  forests  has  been  maintained  and  even  extended 
beyond  measure,  without  any  compensation  to  the  landlords.  This  was  the 
opposite  extreme  and,  as  such,  did  not  benefit  the  forests. 


5IO      THE  EMPIRE  OF  THE   TSARS  AND   THE  RUSSIANS. 

The  communal  domain  is  generally  composed  of  arable  and 
pasture  lands.  These  latter,  too  much  restricted  by  the  Statute, 
are  nearly  always  used  in  common,  each  family  sending  out  their 
cattle,  usually  marked,  under  the  care  of  a  herdsman  hired  by 
the  commime.  The  arable  lands  are  divided — and  redivided  at 
more  or  less  regular  intervals — between  the  members  of  the  com- 
mune, to  be  cultivated  by  each  one  separately,  at  his  own  cost  and 
risk.  Thus  individual  holding  habitually  goes  hand  in  hand  with 
collective  proprietorship.  In  this  mir,  apparently  wholly  commu- 
nistic, the  mainspring  of  effort  is  personal  interest.  In  opposition 
to  an  idea  widely  spread  abroad,  nothing  is  so  repugnant  to  the 
peasant  as  labor  in  common  ;  ever  since  he  has  been  free  he  almost 
invariably  insists  on  working  for  his  own  account. 

The  principle  on  which  the  mir  is  based  is  that  of  periodical 
re-allotments  of  the  soil.*  There  are,  in  this,  three  points  to  be 
considered  :  the  claims  which  entitle  to  a  lot  ;  the  epochs  at  which 
the  common  territory  is  divided  ;  the  mode  of  allotment.  On 
these  three  points,  especially  on  the  two  first,  customs  and  prac- 
tices vary  greatly  according  to  regions. 

As  regards  the  claimants,  the  accepted  unit  is  sometimes  the 
"  soul  "  idushdi)  or  "  revision  soul,"  i.e.,  the  taxed  male  head,  and 
sometimes  the  household  {tihgl6),\  taking  into  account,  as  a  rule, 
the  working  capacities  of  the  different  households  and  the  propor- 
tion of  tax  that  each  can  bear.  The  first  of  these  modes  is  more 
generally  in  use  among  the  Crown  peasants,  who  were  subject  to 

*  The  term  mir,  the  meaning  of  which  shall  be  inquired  into  later  on,  is 
the  only  one  in  use  among  the  peasants.  Those  of  "  commune  "  or  "so- 
ciety "  {dbsh-tchina  and  dbsh-tchestvd),  employed  by  Russian  writers  as 
being  analogous  to  the  gemeinde  and  communitas  of  the  West,  are  foreign 
to  popular  speech. 

t  The  word  tihglo  signifies  "  a  burden,"  "  dues,"  "  contribution," — and 
came  to  be  applied  to  those  who  carry  that  burden,  who  owe  those  dues. 
In  the  time  of  serfdom  this  term  served  to  designate  the  unit  of  labor  to  be 
supplied  by  each  "household,"  technically  meaning  a  man,  woman,  and 
horse.  A  marrifed  couple  is  most  generally  understood ;  but  the  meaning 
undergoes  singular  changes  in  different  localities.  Therefore  the  divisions 
made  on  this  basis  vary  a  great  deal. 


MIR,   FAMILY,   AND  VILLAGE  COMMUNITIES.  511 

only  one  tax — capitation  ;  the  second,  among  the  former  serfs,  who 
used  to  distribute  their  dues  to  their  landlords  by  households 
{tihgld),  and  naturally  pursued  the  same  system  in  distributing  the 
land  which  he  ceded  to  them. 

The  lot  awarded  each  family  is  in  proportion  to  the  number  of 
its  male  members  or  of  its  adult  and  married  members.  It  is  easy 
to  see  what  encouragement  such  a  system  gives  to  the  increase  of 
population.  Each  son,  when  bom,  or  when  he  arrives  at  man's 
estate,  brings  to  the  family  an  additional  lot.  So  that  a  numerous 
offspring,  instead  of  lessening  the  paternal  resources,  increases 
them.  Juridically,  the  women  have  no  claim  whatever  to  land.* 
In  practice  they  have  about  as  great  a  share  of  it  as  the  men  ;  for 
since,  under  the  tihglo  system,  a  lot  is  given  to  each  couple,  it  is 
the  woman  who  really  holds  the  key  to  landed  property.  Hence 
Russia  is,  of  all  European  countries,  that  where  marriage  is  most 
in  honor  and  most  prolific.  Owing  to  this  twofold  superiority, 
the  average  of  births  is  nearly  double  that  in  France.  The  rigor 
of  the  climate,  the  hard  life,  and  above  all  the  mortality  among 
children,  are  the  only  hindrances  to  a  marvellously  rapid  increase 
of  the  rural  population. 

This  very  increase  compels  periodical  re-allotments.  To  sup- 
ply the  new-comers  with  lots,  without  every  time  rehandling  the 
whole  land,  many  communes,  especially  among  the  Crown  peas- 
ants, keep  on  hand  reserve  lands.  These  they  let  for  the  mir's 
benefit,  or  else  make  use  of  as  commons,  for  pasture.  The  grow- 
ing denseness  of  the  population,  the  smallness  of  many  of  the  lots 
ceded  to  the  peasants  at  the  time  of  the  emancipation,  deprive 
most  villages  of  this  resource.  The  new-comers,  then,  can  enforce 
their  right  only  by  means  of  a  re-allotment.  This  would  be  neces- 
sitated anyhow  by  the  fundamental  principle  on  which  com- 
munal life  is  based,  for  otherwise,  families  increasing  unequally, 
the  common  property'-  would  soon  be  unequally  divided.     In  this 

*  Yet  in  certain  regions  the  division  by  "head"  or  "mouth,"  indepen- 
dentl)r  of  age  or  sex,  is  beginning  to  come  up. 


512       THE  EMPIRE   OF   THE    TSARS  AND   THE  RUSSIANS. 

they  have  to  deal  with  one  of  the  difficulties  which  beset  com- 
munism of  any  type,  which,  left  to  its«lf,  inevitably  tends  to  self- 
destruction,  absolute  equality  being  an  impossibility,  unless 
continually  kept  up  by  watchful  re-division.  Of  course,  the 
more  frequent  the  re-allotments,  the  more  faithfully  the  principle 
is  maintained,  but  the  more  agriculture  is  hampered  and  general 
prosperity  hindered. 

For  meadow-lands,  the  system  of  annual  re-allotment  still  pre- 
vails ;  there  even  are,  in  the  government  of  Tamb6f,  communes 
which  proceed  to  it  twice  a  year.  In  others  again,  the  haymaking 
is  done  in  common  and  the  hay  divided  afterward.*  There  are 
districts  where  cultivated  lands  are  subject  to  the  same  system  of 
annual  re-allotment ;  they  are  only  too  numerous  in  the  govern- 
ments of  Sardtof,  Ori61,  Kaluga,  Nijni-N6vgorod,  Vor6nej,  etc.; 
in  that  of  Perm  such  was  the  widely  spread  custom  down  to  1872. 
Such  a  system  is  too  manifestly  disturbing,  too  much  opposed  to 
the  husbandman's  interest  to  be  general.  The  re-allotments 
mostly  take  place  every  three  years,  in  conformity  to  the  most 
popular  mode  of  culture,  that  by  triennial  rotation.  In  places 
this  period  of  three  years  is  doubled,  tripled,  quadrupled.  In 
others  again,  as  in  some  communes  of  the  government  of  Moscow, 
a  decennial  period  has  been  fixed  upon  ;  and  yet  in  others,  as  with 
the  Great-Russians  of  Vor6nej,  they  wait  tiU  a  new  "revision" 
or  census  takes  place.  From  documents  published  in  1880,  such 
appears  to  be  the  rule  among  the  Crown  peasants  of  the  govern- 
ment of  Kazkn.  These  "revisions,"  which  should  not  be  con- 
founded with  what  is  known  in  the  West  under  the  name  of  general 
census,  occur  at  irregular  intervals  of  (until  now)  over  twelve  or 
fifteen  years.  Since  17 19  there  have  been  but  ten,  the  last  having 
taken  place  in  1858.  In  the  communes  which  proceed  to  general 
re-allotments  only  at  revision  time,  none  have  taken   place   yet 

*  The  facts  and  cases  here  mentioned  are  mostly  taken  from  the  agricul- 
tural inquests  or  the  statistics  kept  by  the  various  ministerial  departments 
and  the  zitnstvos. 


MIR,    FAMILY,   AND  VILLAGE   COMMUNITIES.  513 

since  the  abolition  of  serfdom,  and  there  may  be  none  for  some 
time  to  come — perhaps  never,  the  tax  on  males  having  been  sup- 
pressed by  the  Emperor  Alexander  III. ,  which  measure  did  away 
with  the  necessity  for  '  *  revisions  ' '  on  the  old  line. 

Triennial  re-allotment  was  justified  by  the  mode  of  culture  ; 
re-allotment  timed  by  ' '  revisions  ' '  was  based  on  the  system  of 
taxation.  From  one  ' '  revision  ' '  to  the  next,  the  number  of 
"souls,"  or  male  peasants  subject  to  the  poll-tax,  remained  un- 
changed, no  matter  how  many  had  been  the  deaths  and  births. 
The  commune  was  mutually  responsible  before  the  fisc  ;  so  that, 
each  family,  at  each  new  "  revision,"  receiving  a  lot  in  proportion 
to  the  burdens  it  bore  or  the  number  of  hands  it  disposed  of,  the 
tax  which,  after  the  letter  of  the  law,  bore  on  the  persons,  was 
made  indirectly  to  bear  on  the  lands. 

The  fatal  effects  of  frequent  divisions  of  the  soil  scarcely  need 
pointing  out.  On  this  point,  opinions  are  all  but  unanimous.  The 
peasant  does  not  grow  attached  to  a  piece  of  ground  which  he 
does  not  expect  to  keep  and  only  strives  to  draw  from  it  the  great- 
est possible  immediate  profit,  without  a  thought  for  the  morrow. 
His  care  and  his  foresight  he  reserves  for  the  house-lot  {usMbd) 
around  his  izbd.,  which  cannot  be  taken  from  him.  The  adversa- 
ries of  the  mir  do  not  fail  to  make  this  point  in  favor  of  their 
theory  of  the  advantages  of  fixed  and  individual  proprietorship 
over  collective  land  tenure.  The  husbandman  who  tills  a  com- 
munal field  is  unwilling  to  undertake  labor  and  expenses  which 
are  to  benefit  somebody  else.  The  absolute  lack  of  manure  or 
fertilizer  of  any  kind  in  so  many  Great- Russian  villages  is  gener- 
ally ascribed  to  this  want  of  interest  in  the  husbandman.  Hence 
the  unavoidable  impoverishment  of  the  soil  and  constant  aggrava- 
tion of  bad  crops.  To  this  evil  there  formerly  was  a  remedy,  or 
at  least  a  palliative  :  an  exhausted  tract  of  land  was  abandoned  to 
seek  new,  sometimes  virgin,  lands.  Nowadays  the  increase  of 
population  and  the  extension  of  husbandry  render  this  remedy 
more  and  more  difl&cult  to  apply  and  less  and  less  efl&dent. 


514      THE  EMPIRE  OF  THE   TSARS  AND  THE  RUSSIANS. 

Is  this  an  irreparable  evil,  a  curse  naturally  inherent  to  collec- 
tive property  holding  ?  An  impartial  mind  must  needs  reply  :  not 
proven.  Some  few  communes  in  the  governments  of  Penza  and 
Simbirsk  have  hit  on  the  expedient  of  imposing  on  the  peasants 
obligatory  manuring,  with  the  alternative  of  keeping  the  same 
lot  at  the  next  distribution.  This  is  an  example  that  might  be 
followed,  and  the  communal  authorities,  being  always  on  the  spot, 
would  be  better  qualified  than  a  non-resident  to  see  that  such  con- 
ditions be  complied  with.  There  is,  moreover,  a  still  simpler  and 
easier  way  :  to  put  oflF  the  re-allotments.  And  that  is  precisely, 
on  the  showing  of  the  agricultural  inquests,  what  has  been  done 
more  and  more  since  the  emancipation,  and  almost  everywhere, 
now  of  their  own  accord,  now  at  the  suggestion  of  some  intelli- 
gent functionar)\  Annual  re-allotment,  at  least  for  cultivated 
fields,  has  actually  become  an  exception  and  even  the  triennial 
period  is  growing  rare.  Periods  of  ten,  fifteen,  twenty,  even 
thirty  years  are  getting  more  and  more  frequent.  In  some  dis- 
tricts, the  peasants,  made  wise  by  experience,  have  recourse  to  a 
new  distribution  only  at  the  last  extremity. 

For  that  frequent  re-allotments  are  an  evil,  the  most  deter- 
mined advocates  of  the  mir  are  the  first  to  acknowledge.  It  is, 
therefore,  not  to  be  wondered  at,  in  a  country  always  inclined  to 
look  to  the  State  for  interference,  if  more  than  one  voice  endowed 
with  authority  has  expressed  the  wish  that  law  and  administra- 
tion should  regulate  this  vital  matter.  Some  defenders  of  com- 
munal institutions,  seeing  their  pet  theories  endangered  before 
public  opinion  by  the  abuse  of  the  right  of  re-allotment,  have 
besought  the  government  to  hasten  to  the  mir's  assistance  by 
protecting  it  against  itself,  strangely  unconscious  that,  by  such  an 
appeal  to  ofl&cial  interference,  they  run  the  risk  of  striking  a  mor- 
tal blow  at  a  system  of  which  the  main  strength  lies  in  the  popu- 
lar customs,  in  tradition,  in  its  living  spontaneity. 

These  evils  are  far  from  belonging  exclusively  to  communal 
lands.      Private  landed  property  is  not  free  from  them.      Many 


MIR,  FAMILY,  AND  VILLAGE   COMMUNITIES.  515 

estates  are  leased  for  short  terms  to  the  peasants  of  a  commune, 
and  they  proceed  to  divide  and  cultivate  them  in  the  same  manner 
as  their  own  lands.  "What  difference,"  on  this  occasion  remarks 
one  of  the  advocates  of  the  mir,  ' '  between  personal  property 
leased  out  every  year,  as  is  customary  with  so  many  noblemen's 
estates,  and  collective  property,  re-divided  each  year  ?  It  is  more 
difl&cult  to  bring  the  noble  landlords  to  lengthen  the  term  of  their 
leases  than  the  peasants  to  put  off  their  re-allotments.  If  a  law  is 
needed  to  regulate  the  latter,  why  not  the  former? " 

The  Minister  of  Crown  Demesnes  is  said  to  have  lately  pro- 
posed for  study  the  question  of  a  minimum  term  to  be  fixed  for 
the  use  of  arable  lands  ;  but  official  measures  have  already  been 
forestalled  and  may  be  rendered  unnecessary  by  the  spontaneous 
resolutions  of  several  rural  communes.  Thus  the  natural  course 
of  things  brings  its  own  remedy  to  one  of  the  chief  evils  of  col- 
lective tenure.  The  beneficial  effects  of  this  reform  already  make 
themselves  felt.  In  the  governments  of  Tula  and  Kursk,  manur- 
ing and  crops  have  increased  in  consequence.  And  it  has  been 
noticed  that  the  wealthiest  communes  are  those  that  are  most  back- 
ward with  rehandling  their  lands.  A  further  good  effect  is  the 
delay  and  limitations  imposed  on  family  divisions  of  land.  Young 
men  or  young  couples  can  either  stay  at  home  or  go  out  to  work 
for  a  salary  until  a  new  division  gives  them  a  lot  of  the  communal 
land. 

The  manner  of  allotment  is  not  of  less  importance  nor  does  it 
entail  less  inconvenience  than  the  time  of  it.  Here  also  the  dam- 
age is  greater  in  proportion  as  the  communistic  spirit  and  practices 
are  more  strictly  adhered  to.  The  principle  of  the  mir  demands 
that,  each  lot  bearing  an  equal  part  of  the  tax,  each  should  be 
strictly  equal  to  the  next  one.  This  principle  the  Russian  com- 
mune usually  conforms  to  with  servile  punctihousness.  It  strives 
to  make  the  pieces  of  ground  equal  both  in  area  and  value,  then 
lots  are  drawn  for  them.     This  twofold  equality  cannot,  as  a  rule. 


5l6      THE  EMPIRE  OF  THE    TSARS  AND    THE  RUSSIANS. 

be  arrived  at  by  giving  to  each  one  compact  lot.  So  each  peasant 
receives  a  bit  each  of  as  many  kinds  of  soil  as  there  are  in  the 
commune.  The  village  surveyors  begin  by  marking  off  the  lands 
of  the  different  categories,  then,  in  each  of  these  blocks,  as  many 
small  lots  are  cut  out  as  there  are  members  to  be  supplied.  When 
the  lands  are  all  of  the  same  quality,  a  thing  which,  thanks  to  the 
homogeneousness  of  the  Russian  soil,  is  fortunately  less  rare  than 
in  Western  Europe,  the  unequal  distance  from  the  village  still 
makes  them  of  unequal  value  to  the  peasant.  One  of  the  con- 
sequences of  the  community  of  landed  property  is,  indeed,  the 
agglomeration  of  the  dwellings.  Isolated  houses,  dispersed  farms, 
presuppose  permanent  ownership.  To  be  within  reach  of  the  lot 
which  may  fall  to  him,  each  member  of  the  community  must  be 
settled  near  his  brethren,  in  the  centre  of  the  common  domain. 

Thus  in  Great- Russia,  peasant  houses  crowd  together  into  large 
villages,  holding,  many  of  them,  several  thousands  of  inhabitants. 
The  log-houses  stand  on  two  long  straight  lines,  on  both  sides  of  a 
disproportionately  wide  street  (to  obviate  the  spreading  of  fire), 
disposed,  if  possible,  along  a  stream.  The  izb'hs,  which  never 
touch,  usually  present  to  the  street  one  of  their  lateral  faces,  often 
sporting  a  balcony,  or  merely  carved  wood  ornaments.  In  front  of 
the  izbh  is  a  yard  with  stables  and  bams  ;  back  of  it  the  enclosed 
"  house-lot  "  iushdbd),  exempt  from  divisions.  This  manner 
of  clustering  together,  in  harmony  with  the  mode  of  land  tenure, 
is  also  justified  by  the  climate  and  the  nature  of  the  Russian 
soil.  In  the  south  and  east,  where  it  is  most  fertile,  water  is 
scarce  and  springs  are  few  ;  all  over  the  land  communications  are 
impeded  in  spring,  at  thaw- time,  and  in  autumn,  not  to  mention 
the  fear  of  robbery  and  assassination.  These  huge  villages  are  at 
present  one  of  the  chief  obstacles  to  the  establishment  of  individual 
property  which,  under  this  system  of  agglomerated  dwellings,  can- 
not enjoy  all  its  advantages.  Husbandry,  in  fact,  is  nearly  as 
dependent  on  the  manner  of  residence  as  on  that  of  tenure.  In  a 
country  where  population  is  not  dense,  and  distances  are  great, 


MIR,  FAMILY,  AND  VILLAGE  COMMUNITIES.  5 17 

individual  proprietorship  can  have  a  fair  chance  and  full  play  only 
if  the  husbandman,  with  his  stock  and  implements,  resides  in  the 
middle  of  his  land.  Now  in  Great- Russia,  farms  with  isolated 
farmhouses  {khvLtor)  are  almost  unknown  ;  they  are  rare  even 
where  the  peasants  have  purchased  land  for  their  own.  They  are 
met  with  scarcely  anywhere  but  in  Little- Russia,  where  manners 
are  very  diflferent  in  this  respect,  and  lands,  even  where  the 
communal  system  prevails,  are  divided  more  by  the  "house"  or 
"yard"  (dvor)  than  by  the  "soul"  or  household  labor  unit 
(Ji^glo). 

A  goodly  portion  of  the  evils  ascribed  to  the  communal  land 
system  really  is  caused  by  that  of  rural  agglomerations.  Now  it 
would  not  be  sufl&cient  to  abolish  collective  land  tenure  in  order  to 
substitute  isolated  farms  to  the  large  villages,  to  what  the  Germans 
call  das  Dorf system.  Such  a  substitution  is  everywhere  a  diflScult 
thing  and  a  costly,  demanding  much  time  too  ;  in  Russia  it  would 
prove  so  perhaps  more  than  anywhere  else.  It  has  been  now  and 
then  proposed  to  use  the  frequent  fires  as  a  pretence  for  scattering  the 
dwellings  more.  The  greater  distance  between  the  houses  would 
reduce  the  losses  which  the  country  endures  through  the  yearly 
burning  down  of  thousands  of  villages.  Unfortunately  man- 
ners, clime,  soil,  and  the  eminently  sociable  nature  of  the  Russian 
people,  are  not  the  only  obstacles  to  such  plans.  The  Emancipa- 
tion Act  has  raised  one  more :  the  ' '  house-lot ' '  adjoining  the  izbct 
and  given  to  the  owner  thereof  in  full  permanent  possession.  This 
little  enclosed  patch,  exempt  from  the  control  of  the  mir,  means 
simply  this  :  that,  should  the  lands  now  owned  by  a  \allage  in 
common,  be  to-morrow  distributed  finally  among  the  families,  each 
would  remain  where  it  now  lives,  and  be  a  fixture  in  the  village 
for  a  long  time  to  come.  Even  then  it  would  take  centuries,  most 
likely,  to  transform  the  present  mode  of  residence,  and  in  the 
meantime  Russia  would  remain  subject  to  all  the  disadvantages 
which  are  entailed  on  agriculture  by  the  remoteness  of  the  hus- 
bandman's residence,  and  which  make  themselves  the  more  felt  at 


5l8       THE  EMPIRE   OF   THE    TSARS  AND    THE  RUSSIANS. 

present,  the  larger  the  villages  and  the  more  extensive  the  terri- 
tory, increasing  by  just  so  much  the  waste  of  time,  the  cost  of 
transportation,  and  the  difl5culty  of  returning  to  the  soil  in  manure 
or  fertilizers  what  is  taken  from  it  in  crops.  This  again,  however, 
is  one  of  those  evils  of  collective  property  from  which  private 
property  is  far  from  being  always  exempt.  Many  of  the  old  estates, 
disproportionately  vast  even  yet,  are  still  less  within  reach  of  the 
hands  that  are  to  work  them. 

Under  the  system  of  division  generally  in  force,  the  commune's 
territory  is  usuall)'^  divided  into  three  concentric  zones  or  fields,  in 
conformity  to  the  practice  of  triennial  rotation.  From  the  centre, 
occupied  by  the  village,  start  as  many  rays  as  there  are  claimants, 
and  the  sections  thus  obtained  represent  the  lots  to  be  awarded 
each  one  of  them.  These  lots,  therefore,  frequently  assume  the 
wedge-shape ;  but  sometimes  they  take  that  of  long  and  narrow 
parallel  strips.  The  drawing  of  lots  is  arranged  in  such  a  manner 
that  each  claimant  must  receive  a  portion  of  all  the  three  fields  of 
each  category,  without  any  thought  being  taken  to  join  together 
the  portions  allotted  to  the  same  family.  Thus  each  lot  {nadiit) 
is  mostly  composed  of  bits  of  land,  separated  from  one  another  and 
wedged  in  in  other  lots.  The  portion  of  one  ' '  soul ' '  or  one  iihglo 
can  be  made  up  of  scraps  scattered  in  six,  seven,  eight,  nine,  ten 
distant  places,  sometimes  more.  To  get  an  idea  of  the  exceeding 
smallness  of  each  such  particle  of  land,  it  is  sufficient  to  keep  in 
mind  that  the  average  allowance  was  from  seven  and  a  half  to  ten 
acres  per  male  head,  and  that,  the  peasants  having  in  many  cases 
redeemed  only  the  legal  minimum,  the  share  of  each  falls  much 
short  of  that  average.  In  the  communes  which,  while  bearing  a 
large  population,  are  ill  provided  with  land,  this  parcelling  of  the 
communal  domain  leads  to  an  actual  trituration  of  the  soil.  The 
agricultural  inquest  mentions  communes  in  the  government  of 
Kursk  where  fractions  of  lots  have  been  found  measuring  not 
quite  seven  feet  in  width.  Under  the  system  of  individual  tenure 
this  infinitesimal  parcelling  is  rarely  equalled.     Thus  the  system 


MIR,   FAMILY,   AND  VILLAGE   COMMUNITIES.  519 

now  in  force  adds  the  defect  of  individualism,  chief  among  which 
is  the  excessive  parcelling  of  the  land,  to  those  of  communism, 
which  weakens  the  attachment  to  the  soil  and  the  energy  in 
labor,* 

With  such  scraps  of  land  rational  cultivation  is  impossible. 
Then,  as  they  are  distant  sometimes  several  miles  from  one  an- 
other, the  peasant  wastes  a  large  portion  of  his  time  and  strength 
in  useless  journeys,  so  that  it  is  not  unusual  for  the  remoter  ones 
to  be  simply  given  up  by  their  temporary  owner.  Again,  a  great 
deal  of  land  is  lost  in  boundaries,  and  large  quantities  of  grain  in 
seed.  Lastlj'  they  are  so  entangled  that  they  leave  no  room  for 
turning  round  in  and  no  facility  of  access,  so  that,  from  their 
narrowness,  they  are  exceedingly  difficult  to  plough  and  harrow. 
This  places  the  husbandmen  in  a  state  of  mutual  dependence 
which  is  fatal  to  individual  enterprise.  Neighbors,  being  unable 
to  act  singly,  are  compelled  to  combine,  and  this  leads  to  the 
so-called  ' '  compulsory  culture ' '  (Jlurzwang)  of  the  Germans.  It 
becomes  necessary  to  leave  the  commune  to  decide  as  to  the  time, 
if  not  always  as  to  the  nature  of  the  work  to  be  done.  Mathe- 
matical impartiality  thus  really  destroys  the  free  enjoyment  of  the 
land  and  brings  about,  indirectly,  a  sort  of  common,  or  at  least 
simultaneous,  cultivation,  which  might  be  made  profitable  by 
improved  proceedings,  but  which,  with  the  routine  at  present 
prevailing,  becomes  an  additional  hindrance  to  progress^ 

Faults  such  as  these  cannot  be  corrected  without  giving  up  the 
deceptive  theor>^  of  absolutely  identical  lots  and  the  puerile  prac- 
tice which,  by  a  grossly  material  interpretation,  seems  bent  on 
presenting  each  claimant  with  a  clod  of  earth  exactly  like  his 
neighbor's.      It  would  be  better  to  make  up  well  rounded  lots, 

*  The  difficulties  and  disadvantages  of  communal  allotment  are  some- 
times attenuated  by  dividing  the  land,  and  the  taxes  along  with  it,  among 
larger  and  smaller  groups,  which  then  subdivide  it  among  the  single 
members.  These  preliminary  divisions  by  fractions  of  villages  are  usually 
preferred  in  the  larger  communes,  where  direct  division,  by  the  "soul "  or 
tihglo,  would  prove  too  complicated. 


520      THE  EMPIRE   OF   THE    TSARS  AND   THE  RUSSIANS. 

well  balanced  in  value,  of  sizes  varying  according  to  the  quality 
of  the  soil  and  the  distance  from  the  village.  Yet  even  this 
reform  would  not  remove  the  evil.  In  the  poorer  communes, 
the  lots  still  would  be  disproportionately  small,  and  would 
become  smaller  still  from  generation  to  generation,  along  with 
the  increase  of  the  population.* 

As  a  remedy  for  this  evil,  one  of  the  most  serious  that  threaten 
the  mir  in  the  future,  the  usual  panacea  has  of  course  been  pro- 
posed :  the  intervention  of  the  State.  It  has  been  proposed  to 
establish  a  legal  minimum,  below  which  no  lot  or  fraction  of  lot 
should  be  allowed  to  descend.  Such  measures  would  not  only 
have  against  them  the  theoretical  principle  on  which  communities 
are  based  and  according  to  which  each  member  holds  an  equal 
right  to  the  land, — they  would  stumble  against  serious  practical 
difficulties  and  would  find  it  hard  to  triumph  over  the  great 
diversity  of  local  conditions.  It  must  not  be  forgotten,  moreover, 
that  the  excessive  parcelling  of  land  is  not  a  fault  belonging 
exclusively  to  the  collective  system.  Under  that  of  individual 
property,  family  divisions  can  lead  to  similar  resvdts.  We  see 
something  of  this  in  the  West,  in  certain  parts  of  France  for 
instance.  In  Russia  itself,  this  evil  is  encountered,  among  others, 
in  Lithuania,  where  the  individual  sj'stem  is  predominant.  From 
the  moment  that  the  peasant  is  to  be  a  landholder,  it  cannot  be 
avoided  under  any  system.  In  one  way  the  collective  system  even 
has  one  indubitable  advantage  :  it  would,  in  case  of  need,  allow 
of  having  recourse  to  uniform  culture  on  a  large  scale — a  thing 
which,  keeping  pace  with  the  progress  of  instruction  and  agricul- 
ture, might  prove  as  favorable  to  the  productiveness  of  the  soil, 
as  to  the  interests  of  the  joint  proprietors. 

*  On  the  Isle  of  Java,  where  collective  land  tenure  also  prevails,  similar 
causes  have  produced  similar  effects.  The  rapid  increase  of  the  population 
has  reduced  the  lot  of  each  laborer  to  particles  far  more  infinitesimal 
than  in  Russia.  Then  also  there  is  a  general  demand  for  interference  to 
set  a  limit  to  the  parcelling  of  the  soil,  or,  better  still,  for  the  substitution 
of  individual  and  hereditary  tenure  for  that  at  present  in  use.  See  De 
Ivaveleye  :  De  la  PropriiU  et  de  ses  Formes  Primitives. 


BOOK    VIII.     CHAPTER  IV. 

The  Mir  in  Theory  and  Practice — The  Material  Equality  of  the  Lots  does 
not  Always  Imply  Equitable  Distribution — Division  according  to  the 
Working  Capacity  or  Resources  of  the  Laborers — Story  of  One  Com- 
mune—"  Soulless  "  Families  ;  Strong,  "Half- Power,"  Weak  Families 
— The  Mir  as  a  Providence — Arbitrariness  and  Injustice — Usury — The 
Vampires  or  "  i^?>-Eaters  "—Rural  Oligarchy— Landless  Peasants  and 
Rural  Proletariate. 

ThS  system  of  strict  material  equality  is  far  from  implying 
invariable  equity  in  the  distribution  of  the  lands.  As  a  rule, 
there  is  nothing  fixed  and  regular  about  the  proceeding,  certainly 
nothing  mathematical.  The  mir  deals  with  its  members  more 
paternally,  i.e.,  more  arbitrarily:  it  does  not  consider  merely  the 
number  of  persons  that  dwell  in  a  house,  but  also  their  ages,  their 
state  of  health,  their  resources  ;  it  takes  into  account  natural  or 
accidental  inequalities,  weighs  the  strength  and  capacity  of  each 
member,  and  treats  each  according  to  his  needs  or  faculties. 

It  would  be  a  great  mistake  to  see  in  this  effort  at  compensa- 
tion only  a  humanitarian  instinct  or  an  unconscious  socialism, 
bent  on  levelling  everything  in  despite  of  nature.  No  ;  the  peas- 
ants obey  verj'-  diflferent  promptings,  more  positive,  more  practical, 
as  is  their  nature. 

Community  of  lands  stands,  as  already  indicated,  in  closest 
relation  to  solidarity  before  the  fisc.  For  centuries  the  two 
things  have  been  so  intimately  connected,  that  it  was  very'  possi- 
ble for  a  certain  school  to  consider  collective  property  as  simply 
a  consequence  of  that  solidarity.  In  a  countr>'  where  taxes  of 
all  kinds  have  always  been  very  heavy,  where  the  possession  of 
the  soil  might  always  have  been  regarded  more  as  a  burden  than 

521 


522      THE  EMPIRE    OF   THE    TSARS  AND    THE  RUSSIANS 

as  a  privilege,  where  the  sum-total  of  taxes  and  dues  even  now 
frequently  exceeds  the  normal  incx)me  from  the  land,  it  was  but 
natural  that,  in  distributing  the  communal  domain,  the  peasants' 
prime  object  should  always  have  been  the  payment  of  the  taxes. 
Since  the  emancipation  this  question  controls  the  entire  Ufe  of  the 
mir  as  it  did  before,  and,  in  distributing  the  communal  ager^  it 
considers  less  each  individual's  claim  to  the  land  than  his  pa3dng 
capacity.  Each  lot,  as  a  rule,  corresponds  to  a  proportionate  share 
of  the  taxes,  and  the  quantum  of  land  adjudged  to  each  house- 
hold is  in  proportion  to  the  burdens  it  can  bear.  The  distribution 
of  the  communal  lands  is  but  another  form  of  the  distribution  of 
the  communal  taxes. 

The  endowment  of  families  varies  not  only  with  the  number, 
but  also  with  the  strength  and  ages,  of  their  members.  The  most 
robust  and  prosperous  receive  a  larger  share  of  the  land  because 
they  contri]?ute  a  larger  portion  of  the  taxes.  Only  those  com- 
munes where  the  income  from  the  land  regularly  exceeds  the 
annual  payments  need  not  give  way  to  such  preoccupations  but 
are  able  simply  to  divide  their  fields  by  the  male  head  or  by 
the  household. 

What  need  to  point  out  all  the  complications  and  difficulties 
of  such  a  system  ?  The  proceedings  in  use  can  scarcely  be  com- 
prehended without  the  help  of  an  example  or  a  sort  of  diagram. 
We  will  here  find  it  convenient  to  borrow  Mr.  I^e  Play's  system 
of  monographs,  though  not  without  warning  the  reader  that 
such  a  method  can  only  give  the  particular  facts  in  a  given  case, 
from  which  it  were  imprudent  to  generalize.  The  Russian  mir, 
we  must  remember,  knows  of  no  uniform  laws  or  rules,  the  cus- 
toms vary  with  the  regions,  the  districts,  even  the  villages,  each 
community  being  free  to  regulate  these  matters  to  please  itself,  so 
it  pays  the  taxes  imposed  on  it. 

An  economist,  Mr.  Trir6gof,  seeing  in  the  village  communities 
the  organic  cells  of  the  great  body  politic,  resolved  to  investigate 
one  closely ;  so  to  speak,  imder  the  microscope.     At  the  end  of  a 


MIR,   FAMILY,   AND  VILLAGE   COMMUNITIES.  523 

few  years  of  patient  observation,  he  gave  to  the  world,  in  two 
successive,  most  curious  papers,  the  results  of  this  sort  of  socio- 
histological  study.  The  commune  chosen  by  him  is  named 
Arashin  and  is  situated  in  the  government  of  Sardtof  It  is  in  no 
wise  different  from  its  neighbors. 

When  Mr.  Trir6gof  began  his  investigation,  Ardshin  ntunbered 
493  inhabitants  of  both  sexes,  who  formed  87  families,  dwelling 
in  the  same  number  of  houses.  The  ' '  souls, ' '  as  established  by 
the  last  "revision"  and  subject  to  the  poll-tax,  were  212  in 
number.  The  communal  territory  covered  846  dessiatinas  (about 
2,327  acres,  at  about  2^  acres  to  the  dessiatina)  of  arable  land,  not 
including  the  vegetable  gardens  and  hemp  patches  immediately 
adjoining  the  village.  The  arable  lands,  divided,  as  usual,  in 
three  fields,  were  broken  up  into  212  lots,  the  same  number  as 
that  of  the  tax-paying  "  souls,"  of  about  4  dessiatinas  (11  acres) 
each,  every  lot  comprising  a  portion  of  each  of  the  three  com- 
munal fields.  To  the  distribution  of  the  property  corresponds 
that  of  the  burdens.  All  contributions  and  dues,  be  they  per- 
sonal or  land  taxes,  charged  by  the  State  to  the  commune  of 
Ardshin,  the  tnir  merged  into  one  mass,  with  no  distinction  as  to 
name,  origin,  or  destination.  The  taxes,  thus  blocked,  are  then 
divided  into  a  number  of  quotas  equal  to  that  of  the  "revision 
souls  ' '  and  the  corresponding  lots.  The  sum- total  of  taxes  and 
dues  amounted  for  Ardshin  to  2,607  roubles  and  30  copecks, 
which  gives  12  roubles  and  30  copecks  by  "  soul  "  and  lot. 

If,  in  conformity  with  theory  and  legal  fictions,  the  unit  of 
distribution  had  been  the  "revision  soul,"  every  such  "soul" 
would  have  had  its  4  dessiatinas  and  paid  its  12  roubles.  But 
Ardshin  does  not  operate  per  "soul"  or  "head,"  nor  even  by 
the  household.  While  one  family  would  receive  only  one  lot  and 
pay  the  12  roubles  and  30  copecks  thereto  pertaining,  another 
would  be  put  in  possession  of  five  and  a-half  lots  and  assessed  at 
over  73  roubles  a  year.  The  most  singular  thing  about  it  is  that 
the  portion  of  land  and  of  taxes  allotted  to  certain  families  flue- 


524      THE  EMPIRE  OF  THE   TSARS  AND  THE  RUSSIANS. 

tuates  every  year,  according  as  the  laboring  power  of  their 
members  increases  or  decreases.  Thus  the  house  of  one  Vasslli 
Fed6tof  held,  in  1874,  four  and  a-half  lots,  five  in  1875  and  five 
and  a  half  in  1876.  Why  this  yearly  augmentation  of  half  a  lot, 
i.e.,  of  two  dessiatinas  ?  Because  Vassili  Fed6tors  children  were 
growing  up,  and  the  family,  therefore,  was  able  to  bear  an  increase 
of  labor  and  payment.  Ivan  Fed6tof  s  share,  on  the  other  hand, 
had,  from  three  lots,  fallen  to  two  within  the  same  span  of  time, 
because  the  head  of  the  house  was  growing  old  and  the  laboring 
power  of  the  family  was  steadily  decreasing. 

It  appears  from  this  that,  where  the  commune  wishes  to  keep 
an  accoimt  of  all  the  changes  brought  on  by  age,  sickness,  or 
infirmity,  it  is  compelled  to  divide  the  land  anew  each  year — 
unless,  as  is  frequently  done,  a  lot  or  half  lot  is  simply  transferred 
from  one  family  to  another,  without  touching  the  whole.  At 
Ardshin  the  distribution  is  continually  fluctuating  according  to 
the  means  of  families,  the  age  and  health  of  their  members.  In 
this  respect  the  paternal,  if  not  disinterested,  solicitude  and  cau- 
tion of  the  Ardshin  mir  goes  very  far  ;  it  investigates  all  the  phases 
of  domestic  life,  it  enters  into  individual  differences.  Thus  a 
certain  family  by  the  name  of  Maximof,  which,  by  the  "revision 
lists,"  should  have  received  four  lots  and  paid  for  four  "  souls," 
had  only  two  and  a  half  and  paid  in  proportion,  because  one 
of  its  members  was  afflicted  with  bad  eyes  and  another  with  a 
chronic  throat  trouble. 

Age  and  physical  strength  are  not  the  only  standards  of 
assessment ;  the  mir  also  considers  the  resources,  the  means  of 
labor  of  each  house  or  "  yard  "  {dvor),  what  economists  call  "  the 
plant."  Thus  the  mir  of  Ardshin  classes  the  famihes  into  four 
categories.  The  first  comprises  those  which,  from  lack  of  adult 
laborers  or  agricultural  implements,  are  imable  to  cultivate  land 
profitably  and  to  bear  the  least  part  of  the  communal  burdens. 
Out  of  eighty-seven  families,  three  were  in  this  condition.  They 
got  no  land  and  were  exempt  from  taxes ;  in  technical  jargon. 


MIR,    FAMILY,   AND  VILLAGE   COMMUNITIES,  525 

"  they  had  no  souls."  Next  to  these  "soulless  "  families  come, 
in  the  classification  adopted  by  Ardshin,  the  ' '  half-power  fam- 
ilies," i.e.,  such  as  do  have  one  valid  laborer,  but  are  unprovided 
with  the  laborer's  indispensable  helpmate — a  horse.  There  were 
some  ten  such  families  ;  they  received  each  one  lot,  and  were  taxed 
accordingly.  To  the  third  class,  by  far  the  most  numerous  (45  out 
of  87),  belong  the  families  which  have  only  one  laborer,  but  one 
or  two  horses  ;  they  paid  each  for  two  * '  souls  ' '  and  got  two  lots. 
Lastly  came  thirty  families  more  numerous  or  wealthier  than  the 
others,  each  of  which  had  charge  of  more  than  two  lots,  most  of 
them  having  three  or  four,  some  five  and  even  five  and  a  half,  and 
naturally  taxed  in  proportion. 

It  appears  from  the  above  that,  in  the  commune  of  Ardshin,  the 
"  soulless  "  and  the  "  half-power  "  families,  and  those  having  only 
one  laborer,  the  joint  number  of  which  amounted  to  fifty-seven,  i.e. , 
over  two  thirds  of  the  whole,  held,  together,  less  than  half  the  com- 
munal lands,  while  the  remaining  third,  composed  of  the  richer  fam- 
ilies, held  between  them  more  than  half  the  lots — 112  against  100, 
— and  paid  more  than  the  other  fifty-seven  put  together — 1,377 
roubles  and  60  copecks  against  1,230  roubles  on  a  total  of  2,607 
roubles  and  60  copecks. 

A  rather  unexpected  deduction  is  forced  on  us  by  this  mode  of 
distribution,  which  is  that,  with  these  seemingly  wholly  commu- 
nistic proceedings,  it  is  in  reality  not  so  much  the  personal  strength 
of  the  laborer  as  the  resources  he  disposes  of  which  constitute  a 
claim  to  the  land.  In  a  mir  like  that  of  Ardshin,  it  might  almost 
be  said  to  be — capital !  Land  is  preferably  awarded  to  those  who 
have  most  means  to  get  something  out  of  it.  It  is  less  the  demand 
for  produce  which  is  considered  than  the  means  of  production. 

This  uneven  distribution,  whether  by  "the  soul"  or  the 
"household"  {tiaglo),  in  accordance  with  the  number  of  able- 
bodied  laborers  in  each  house  and  their  aptitude  to  work,  is  ad- 
duced by  certain  Russian  writers  of  note,  such  as  Ytiri  Samdrin 
and  Prince  Vassiltchikof,  as  the  distinctive  characteristic  of  the 


526      THE  EMPIRE  OF  THE    TSARS  AND   THE  RUSSIANS. 

mir,  the  essential  trait  by  which  the  Great-Russian  commune 
diflfers  from  all  agrarian  associations  or  communities,  whether  of 
ancient  or  modern  times.  They  delight  in  presenting  this  mode 
of  division  as  a  solution  of  the  property  question  especially  belong- 
ing to  the  Russian  people,  and  radically  different  from  all  more 
or  less  analogous  institutions.  As  a  matter  of  fact  it  may  be  so 
to-day,  but  from  the  historical  standpoint  the  correctness  of  this 
assertion  is  questionable.  This  manner  of  distributing  land  seems 
to  be  derived,  not  from  a  particular  conception  of  property  as  such, 
but  simply  from  the  application  to  property  of  the  mode  of  distri- 
buting the  taxes.  The  truth  of  this  position  is  proved  by  the  fact 
that  in  certain  urban  communities  the  produce  of  the  communal 
lands  is  distributed  among  the  inhabitants  in  proportion  to  the 
figure  of  taxes  paid  by  each  of  them.* 

Such  a  standard — the  working  capacity'  of  the  husbandmen — 
could  hardly  suit  any  but  a  country  where  the  use  of  the  soil  was, 
for  the  laborer,  less  a  right  than  a  biirden.  Take  it  all  in  all,  the 
cultivation  of  the  soil  may  be  regarded  as  a  sort  of  public  service, 
— an  obligatory  service  incumbent  on  every  able-bodied  man,  and 
fi-om  which  only  age  or  sickness  exempts.  It  is  a  fact  that  in  most 
communes  where  the  income  from  the  land  runs  short  of  the  dues, 
the  men,  from  the  age  of  twenty  to  that  of  sixty,  are  accounted  as 
laborers,  and,  as  such,  obliged  to  take  their  share  of  the  land  and 
of  the  taxes.  In  the  poorest  villages  this  sort  of  service  begins  at 
eighteen,  or  even  sixteen  ;  and  no  one  can  ask  to  be  freed  from  it 
until  he  is  sixty,  or  fifty-five,  at  the  very  least. 

Should  the  antiquity  of  the  tihglo  as  labor  imit  be  established, 

it  would  go  far  to  confirm,  at  least  in  part,  the  views  of  Mr.  Tchi- 

*  A  large  number  of  cities  own  cultivated  lands.  Some  let  them  to  farm- 
ers, others  divide  them  after  the  manner  of  the  rural  »«*>.  The  system 
mentioned  in  the  text  is  found  to  exist  in  Mol6ga,  a  district  city  in  the  gov- 
ernment of  Yarosldvl.  The  inhabitants  are  divided  into  eleven  sdintas,  i.e., 
"  hundreds,"  and  the  meadows  belonging  to  the  city  into  as  many  lots, 
which  each  sdtnia  mows  by  turns.  The  produce,  instead  of  being  distributed 
by  the  "  head  "  or  family,  is  divided  among  the  members  of  each  sdtnia,  in 
proportion  to  the  quota  of  their  respective  taxes. 


MIR,   FAMILY,  AND  VILLAGE  COMMUNITIES.  527 

tcherin  and  the  school  which  regards  the  Russian  commune  as 
having  sprung  out  of  the  Moscovite  fiscal  system.  In  that  case 
the  mode  of  division  and  onerous  taxation  would  also  mainly  ac- 
count for  the  general  adherence  to  the  communal  system.  In  a 
state  where  the  fiscal  system,  through  centuries,  made  of  the  pos- 
session of  land  as  much  an  obligation  and  burden  as  a  privilege 
and  right,  the  reasons  which  elsewhere  urged  to  the  dissolution  of 
communities  could  not  have  much  weight.  Why  proceed  to  a 
final  division  when  it  frequently  was  more  in  the  taxpayer's  inter- 
est to  reduce  his  lot  than  to  extend  it  ?  It  is  quite  possible  the 
mir  may  have  stood  its  ground  through  so  many  centuries  because 
of  the  burdens  which  were  heaped  on  it,  the  individuals  dreading 
to  take  on  their  own  responsibility  the  load  which  it  was  for  the 
community  to  bear. 

This  liunping  and  distribution  of  lands  and  taxes,  in  conformity 
with  each  member's  resources,  constitutes  what  the  ingenious  inves- 
tigator of  Ardshin  calls  "  the  popular  tax  apportionment,"  and  in 
his  opinion  there  is  not  much  need  of  any  other.  It  little  matters 
what  is  taxed,  or  how  the  state  or  provinces  distribute  the  direct 
taxes.  The  peasant  does  not  care  to  know  whether  he  pays  for 
the  land,  or  for  "souls"  or  families;  poll-tax,  land-tax, — in  his 
eyes  it  is  all  one.  All  he  cares  for  is  the  sum-total  of  the  dues 
and  the  manner  in  which  the  mir  distributes  it  among  the  mem- 
bers.' So  that  it  was  almost  an  idle  trouble  to  substitute  a  land- 
tax  or  income-tax  for  the  capitation-tax  ;  any  kind  of  reform  is 
bootless  unless  it  lightens  the  mass  of  the  peasant's  liabilities.  On 
the  other  hand,  the  taxes,  heavy  as  they  are,  do  not  crush  him  as 
utterly  as  is  usually  supposed,  the  assessment  in  each  individual 
case  being  proportioned  to  the  taxpayer's  means  and  strength. 

Ardshin  shows  us  the  exact  nature  of  what  may  be  called  the 
commune's  fiscal  solidarity  and  the  almost  sovereign  power  with 
which  it  invests  the  mir.  This  power,  the  apologists  of  the  village 
communes  assure  us,  the  m,ir  almost  invariably  uses  for  the  greater 

'  Does  not  this  practically  amount  to  "  single-tax  "  ? 


528      THE  EMPIRE  OF  THE   TSARS  AND   THE  RUSSIANS. 

good  of  all  its  members,  striving  with  the  strictest  equity,  the  most 
scrupulous  earnestness,  to  balance  all  unevenness,  to  avoid  all  un- 
fairness. Conceived  of  thus,  the  mir  would  be  to  the  peasant  a 
sort  of  earthly  providence  ;  the  commune,  a  mother  ever  watchful 
lest  any  of  her  children  should  be  taxed  beyond  their  powers,  A 
village  like  Ar^hin  appears  to  our  enraptured  eyes  in  the  guise 
of  a  living  rural  Utopia,  where  ignorant  boors  have  been,  for 
several  centuries,  converting  into  realities  the  most  daring  dreams 
of  the  thinkers  of  the  West.  To  make  of  these  communes 
veritable  Edens,  all  that  were  needed,  it  would  seem,  is  to  lighten 
the  taxation. 

Many  writers  since  Herzen  have  extolled  the  peasants'  sense 
of  solidarity,  their  good  faith  and  sound  judgment  in  their  dealings 
with  one  another  and  matters  pertaining  to  all  those  delicate 
questions  of  measurement  and  partition.  These  praises  are,  on 
the  whole,  deserved.  But,  were  they  always  so,  the  mujik  would 
not  be  human.  Such  proceedings  lend  themselves  too  easily  to 
abuses  of  all  sorts  for  the  mir  to  be  quite  free  from  them.  Accord- 
ingly the  detractors  of  the  communal  principle  are  not  at  a  loss  for 
flaws  and  elements  of  disturbance. 

Fiscal  solidarity,  which,  in  a  model  village  like  Ardshin  beams 
on  us  as  the  beneficient  wzr-fairy,  frowns  in  others  as  a  tyrant 
whose  yoke  is  unbearable.  To  rid  themselves  of  it,  many  peas- 
ants of  those  who  are  better  off  try  to  go  out  of  the  community. 
The  discretionary  powers  of  distribution,  admired  by  some  as  the 
master  stroke  of  popular  genius,  is  regarded  by  many  even  of  the 
advocates  of  the  mir  as  an  ingenious  but  dangerous  piece  of 
machinery,  which,  in  order  not  to  degenerate  into  an  abuse, 
stands  in  need  of  being  regulated  by  the  State.* 

The  fact  is  that  arbitrariness  has  opened  the  way  for  intrigue 
and  corruption  into  this  system,  apparently  so  strictly  equitable. 


*  Thus  Prince  Vassiltchikof,  a  great  admirer  of  the  system — not  perceiv- 
ing how  difficult  and,  perhaps,  inefficient  any  legislation  in  such  a  matter 
would  be. 


MIR,    FAMILY,   AND  VILLAGE   COMMUNITIES.  529 

The  agricultural  inquests  have,  in  this  respect,  become  the  vehicle  of 
plaints  which  come  indeed  from  functionaries  or  proprietors  foreign 
to  the  mir  but  should  not  therefore  be  made  light  of.  These  small 
self-governing  democracies  are  exposed  to  two  opposite  evils  :  the 
tyranny  of  the  crowd  and  that  of  individuals.  At  one  time  it  will 
be  the  mass,  the  poor,  who  will  lay  down  the  law  to  the  rich,  for- 
cing on  them  supplementary  lots  and  thus  compelling  them  to  pay 
more  than  their  share  of  the  dues.  In  the  north,  where  the  peas- 
ants frequently  make  their  living  chiefly  by  industry  and  trade,  it 
is  no  rare  thing  for  a  commune  to  let  in  a  particularly  skilled  arti- 
san or  a  more  than  usually  successful  tradesman  for  two  lots,  /.  ^., 
for  a  double  quota  of  taxes,  which  is  but  another  way  of  taxing 
capital  or  income.  At  another  time,  it  will  be  the  rich  who, 
through  corruption  or  bullying,  will  lay  down  the  law  to  the 
majority,  gain  possession  of  the  best  lands,  and  create  in  the  very 
midst  of  the  mir  a  sort  of  oppressive  oligarchy.  This  latter 
abuse,  although  apparently  the  least  reconcilable  with  the  consti- 
tution of  the  mir^  appears  at  present  to  be  the  more  frequent  of  the 
two  ;  at  least  it  is  more  complained  of  in  the  depositions  made 
before  the  great  agricultural  inquest.  There  are  in  these  Rus- 
sian villages  men  who  would  be  called  in  the  West  exploiteurs, 
vampires  :  enterprising,  clever  men,  who  fatten  themselves  at  the 
cost  of  the  community.  The  mujik  has  for  them  the  frightfully 
expressive  name  of  '^  mir-^aXers^^  (miro-yMy).  In  many  govern- 
ments— those  of  Kaluga,  Sardtof,  and  others — most  villages  are  pic- 
tured as  being  under  the  control  of  two  or  three  wealthy  peasants, 
who  beguile  the  commune  out  of  its  best  lands  "  for  a  song" — or 
for  no  compensation  at  all.  To  achieve  this  there  is  no  need 
either  of  dealing  unfairly  at  the  partitions  or  of  cheating  at  the 
drawing  of  lots. 

In  these  villages  as  in  ancient  Rome,  it  is  usually  through 
debt  that  the  poor  fall  into  the  power  of  the  rich.*    The  vampire 

*  It  must  be  admitted  that  in  this  respect  the  peasant  is  wronged  not  by 
his  brethren  alone,  but  also  by  middlemen  of  all  sorts,  by  speculators, 
either  urban  or  rural,  and  generally  known  under  the  designation  of  "  fists," 


530      THE  EMPIRE   OF   THE    TSARS  AND   THE  RUSSIANS. 

extends  to  the  peasant  reduced  to  want  through  improvidence, 
sickness,  or  accident,  loans  beyond  his  power  of  repayment.  The 
frequent  failures  of  crops  in  the  southeast  are  a  standing  danger 
to  the  needy,  a  standing  opportunity  for  the  unscrupulous  rich. 
The  insolvent  debtor  is  compelled  to  give  up  to  his  creditor,  often  for 
a  nominal  price,  a  lot  which  he  has  no  longer  the  means  of  tilling, 
lyiquor  is  the  bait  most  freely  used,  and  the  keeper  of  the  kabhk 
(saloon-keeper)  the  habitual  "wzr-eater."  Usury  is  the  ulcer 
that  gnaws  at  the  peasants'  vitals,  and  collective  land  tenure  is  not 
free  from  blame  in  this. 

Property  being  common,  the  mujik  cannot  mortgage  his  share 
of  it.  Even  the  ushdba^  or  house-lot,  which  is  exempt  from  com- 
munal handling,  cannot,  so  long  as  the  redemption  operation  is 
not  completed,  be  alienated  to  anybody  not  of  the  mir  without  the 
latter* s  consent.  So  that  among  the  Russian  peasants,  as  among 
the  Arab  tribes  of  French  Algeria,  there  is  no  landed,  but  only 
personal,  credit ;  the  consequence  is — the  mujik  pays  for  the  "  mir- 
eater's  "  money  at  the  rate  of  lo  j^  a  tnonth,  often  as  high  as  150  ^ 
a  year.*  The  administration,  the  press,  the  local  assemblies  have 
been,  for  the  last  twenty  years,  cudgelling  their  brains  to  find  a 
way  of  coming  to  the  peasant's  relief; — popular  banks  have  been 
started  by  the  State  and  by  private  enterprise, — in  vain.  The 
thorny  problem  of  agricultural  credit,  so  complicated  everywhere, 
remains  harder  to  solve  in  Russia  than  elsewhere.     The  peasant 

{kulaki),  i.e.,  monopolizers.  There  even  are  cases,  if  we  are  to  believe  the 
denunciations  of  a  portion  of  the  press  and  the  revelations  brought  about 
by  certain  trials  {for  instance  the  affair  with  Count  Bobrinsky's  peasants, 
February,  1891),  when  former  serfs,  hopelessly  in  arrear  with  their  rents  for 
lands  farmed  by  them  from  their  former  lords,  are  actually  reduced  to  a 
semi-servitude,  until  they  have  acquitted  themselves  in  full,  by  the  "count- 
ing-houses "  of  great  landholders. 

*  See  reports  of  the  "  Inquest  "  ;  also  the  writings  of  Prince  Vassiltchi- 
kof  and  A.  V.  Ydkovlef.  The  Russian  "land-banks,"  whose  bonds  are  in 
great  demand  in  the  west  of  the  empire,  usually  lend  only  to  individual 
landholders— ^wt^5A-/cA»^5, — and,  owing  to  the  improvident  thriftlessness 
of  many  of  the  latter,  these  advances,  meant  to  support  large-scale  agricul- 
ture through  the  crisis  of  emancipation,  became  for  numbers  of  the  former 
serfholders  the  cause  or  means  of  total  luin. 


MIR,   FAMILY,  AND  VILLAGE   COMMUNITIES.  531 

remains  the  quarry  of  Jewish  usurers  in  the  west,  of  vampires 
and  close-fisted  speculators  in  the  north,  centre,  and  southeast, 
Accordinglj'^,  penury  is  frequently  met  with  among  these  husband- 
men, who  boast  the  title  of  landowners.  The  tendency  of  a  great 
mass  of  testimony — which,  it  is  true,  one  should  beware  of  accept- 
ing literally — is  to  show  that  since  the  emancipation  there  are  only 
two  classes  of  peasants  left :  the  rich  and  the  poor.  The  middle  class 
would  seem  to  have  vanished  along  with  serfdom,  which,  by  bend- 
ing all  heads  under  a  uniform  yoke,  maintained  an  artificial  kind  of 
level,  to  fall  below  which  was  almost  as  difficult  as  to  rise  above  it. 
The  restraint  of  nobiliary  tutelage  once  removed,  free  play  was  left 
to  individual  qualities  and  vices,  to  industry  and  laziness,  so  that, 
in  spite  of  the  common  ownership  of  the  soil,  one  of  the  first  effects 
produced  by  liberty  was  to  increase  inequalities. 

The  picture  which  results  from  the  investigations  of  the  great 
agricultural  inquest  is  not  attractive.  The  greater  part  of  the 
depositions  goes  to  show  that  the  soil  is  being  impoverished  from 
lack  of  fertilizing,  in  consequence  of  the  too  frequent  partitions  ; 
the  effort  to  achieve  absolute  equality  in  the  allotments  leads  to 
an  absurd  and  inconvenient  parcelling  of  the  land,  which  is,  so  to 
speak,  frittered  into  dust,  while  the  object  is  not  attained,  for  all 
this  minuteness  cannot  maintain  even  an  average  semblance  of 
well-being  in  the  families.  Undivided  property,  the  commission's 
report  concludes,  is  an  insuperable  obstacle  to  agriculture,  a  fetter 
to  individual  liberty,  a  hindrance  to  all  spirit  of  enterprise,  a  pre- 
mium to  carelessness  and  indolence.  The  great  advantage  of  the 
communal  system,  the  great  argument  put  forward  by  its  advo- 
cates, is  that,  by  making  the  holding  of  land  open  to  all,  it  does 
away  with  proletariate  ;  and  now,  if  its  opponents  are  to  be  credit- 
ed, it  already  threatens  to  do  in  Russia  what  it  has  done  in  Java  : 
to  transform  the  entire  rural  population  into  proletarians. 

What  is  true,  in  Russia  as  well  as  elsewhere,  is  that  the  bare 
owning  of  land  is  not  much  without  the  means  of  bringing  out  its 
value.     Now  the  commune,  while  it  distributes  the  land  to  its 


532       THE  EMPIRE   OF   THE    TSARS  AND    THE  RUSSIANS. 

members,  gives  them  neither  working  funds,  nor  livestock,  nor 
ag^cultural  implements.  Therefore  we  often  see  peasants  who, 
having  sold  their  right  in  the  land — "sold  their  souls"  is  the 
technical  expression — live  as  day-laborers  on  wages  upon  the  land 
assigned  them  by  the  mir.  The  guaranty  against  proletariate  lies 
less  in  the  even  partition  of  the  soil  than  in  the  diffusion  of  capital. 

Besides,  even  as  matters  stand  now,  it  is  not  strictly  true  that 
each  man  has  his  share  of  the  soil.  The  universal  right  admitted 
by  theory  cannot  always  be  carried  out  in  practice.  Not  content 
with  spreading  through  the  cities,  where  there  is  nothing  to  check 
it,  proletariate  gradually  sneaks  into  the  villages,  guarded  as  they 
seem  to  be  by  that  solid  rampart,  the  commune.  Numbers  of 
peasants  at  the  present  day  have  not  a  foot  of  land  to  their  name  : 
some  because  they  have  given  up  their  share,  to  take  up  trade  or 
a  vagrant's  life  ;  many  because  their  communes,  having  no  reserve 
lands  and  putting  ofiF  the  allotments  more  and  more,  have  not  yet 
given  them  their  share ;  others  again  because  they  became  or- 
phaned before  they  were  of  age  and  the  commune,  their  legal 
guardian,  has  taken  from  them  their  father's  lot,  fearing  lest, 
through  their  inability  or  inadequate  strength,  the  commune 
should  be  left  to  pay  the  dues  with  which  every  lot  is  burdened. 

Popular  speech  has  a  special  name  for  these  mujiks  despoiled 
of  land :  it  calls  them  hobyli.  Provincial  statistics  supply  some 
instructive  figures  on  this  subject.  In  1871,  only  ten  years  after 
the  emancipation  which  had  given  them  land,  thousands  of  peas- 
ants already  were  without  any,  in  the  rich  Black- Mould  regions  as 
well  as  in  the  meagre  ones  of  the  north.  In  the  government  of 
Kostrom^  alone  there  were  98,000  such  peasants,  94,000  in  that  of 
Tamb6f,  and  77,000  in  that  of  Kursk.*    This  evil,  moreover,  can 

*  In  this  latter  government  yf^  of  the  peasants  are  said  to  be  landless, 
and  almost  as  many  more  reduced  to  the  small  hereditary  "house-lot" 
(usddda).  Adding  to  these  the  people  of  various  classes  settled  in  the  vil- 
lages, it  was  found  that  in  this  government  alone  over  200,000  persons,  t.  e. 
over  ^j  of  the  rural  population,  had  no  part  in  the  landed  property.  In 
that  of  Kostrom^  the  proportion  rose  to  ■^. 


MIR,   FAMILY,  AND  VILLAGE  COMMUNITIES.  533 

only  increase,  since  the  families  that  once  have  gone  out  of  a  com- 
munity cannot  return  into  it  except  they  buy  back  their  forfeited 
membership,  not  to  mention  the  fact  that  re-allotments  are  becom- 
ing more  and  more  rare,  the  lots  smaller  and  smaller  as  a  natural 
eflfect  of  the  increase  of  the  population.*  Thus  collective  tenure 
stands  doubly  convicted  of  inefficiency  :  first  in  being  unable  to 
really  secure  a  share  in  the  land  to  every  one ;  second,  in  being 
unable  to  protect  from  penury  such  families  as  it  does  provide 
with  land. 

*  Rural  proletariate  would  already  be  a  much  more  numerous  class  than 
it  is,  were  it  not  for  the  resource  opened  to  it  by  colonization.  (See  end  of 
this  volume.)  The  greater  part  of  the  peasants  who  go  off  into  Asia  are 
driven  to  emigrate  by  lack  of  land.  Out  of  each  100  emigrants  going  to 
settle  in  Siberia  who  passed  through  the  government  of  Tomsk  in  1887,  62 
owned  no  land,  or  very  little.  Out  of  a  total  of  780  families,  479  declared 
they  had  left  their  communes  from  lack  of  land,  and  278  from  lack  of  work. 
So  it  appears  that,  in  spite  of  the  miry  the  causes  that  lead  to  emigration 
are  much  the  same  in  Russia  as  in  the  West.  In  1890  the  number  of 
emigrants  who  had  gone  to  Siberia  was  estimated  at  40,000  annually. 
Emigration  was  regulated  by  law  only  in  1889.  Until  then  it  had  been 
going  on  almost  at  random. 


BOOK  VIII.    CHAPTER  V. 


Partisans  and  Opponents  of  the  Communal  System — Frequent  Exaggera- 
tions in  Both  Camps — Are  the  Faults  most  justly  Imputed  to  the  Mir  All 
Inherent  to  Collective  Tenure  ? — How  Many  are  Due  to  Communal  Soli- 
darity and  to  the  Fiscal  System — Situation  Created  for  the  Communes 
by  Emancipation  and  Redemption — The  Extent  of  Peasant  I,ots — The 
Mir  does  not  yet  really  Own  the  I/and — The  Village  Communities  will  be 
in  a  Normal  Condition  only  after  they  have  done  Paying  the  Redemp- 
tion Annuities. 

At  the  present  day,  as  in  the  days  of  serfdom,  the  Russian 
commune  generally  has  two  kinds  of  partisans :  the  Slavophils, 
defenders  of  the  national  traditions,  and  the  radical  democrats, 
more  or  less  avowed  followers  of  the  West.  The  former  see  in  it 
a  Slavic  and  patriarchal  institution,  destined  to  preserve  Russia 
from  the  revolutionary  throes  of  the  West ;  the  latter  insist  on 
seeing  in  it  a  survival  of  the  primeval  joint  land  tentu"e,  and  a 
precious  germ  of  the  popular  associations  of  the  future.  Between 
these  two  schools,  so  diflferent  in  spirit,  and  starting  from  such 
different  premises, — orthodox  Slavophilism  and  cosmopolitan 
radicalism, — ^thdr  common  liking  for  the  agrarian  commune 
forms  a  connecting  link.  On  this  neutral  ground  many  con- 
servatives, with  more  or  less  national  and  sometimes  aristocratic 
tendencies,  are  willing  to  make  gracious  advances  to  socialism 
and  radicalism  with  their  levelling  propensities,  and  affect  to 
deplore,  as  incurably  tainted,  the  social  conditions  of  the  most 
thriving  Western  states,  hinting  that  Russia  is  the  only  country 
where  property  is  organized  on  rational  principles,  and,  not  con- 
tent with  proclaiming  that  landed  property  is  the  indispensable 
consummation    and  accompaniment    of  liberty,   to  indorse  the 

534 


MIR,    FAMILY,   AND  VILLAGE   COMMUNITIES.  535 

revolutionary  sophisms  about  paid  labor  being  only  another  form 
of  serfdom.* 

This  queer  combination,  not  unusual  in  Russia,  of  the  Slavo- 
phil spirit  and  socialistic  vagaries,  is  not  as  unnatural  as  may 
seem  at  first  sight.  Between  these  two  seemingly  diametrically 
opposed  tendencies, — between  the  socialistic  innovator,  who  is 
nothing  if  not  cosmopolitan  and  unbelieving,  who  dreams  of 
annulling  political  boundaries  as  well  as  pulling  down  private 
landmarks,  and  the  orthodox  Slavophil,  austerely  in  love  with 
the  national  traditions,  sensitively  jealous  of  his  country's  glory 
and  suspicious  of  all  things  foreign, — between  these  two  there  is, 
as  we  have  seen,  fa  hidden  link  :  contempt  for  modem  civilization 
which  both  anathematize, — an  aversion,  common  to  both  against 
European  society,  against  the  bourgeois  science  and  political 
economy  of  the  West,  which  one  party  attacks  in  the  name  of 
an  unrealizable  Utopian  future,  and  the  other  in  that  of  traditions 
belonging  to  an  almost  as  chimerical  past. 

The  Russian  commune's  enemies  are  the  habitual  opponents 
of  the  Slavophil  tendencies  and  socialistic  dreams,  devoted  to 
Western  institutions  and  anxious  for  their  country's  complete 
assimilation  with  Europe ;  the  economists,  who  take  thought, 
first  and  foremost,  for  material  production,  and  are  opposed,  in  the 

*  See  in  the  Revue  des  Deux  Mondes  of  March  ist,  1879,  ™y  study 
entitled :  Le  Socialisme  Agraire  et  la  PropriHt  Fonciire  en  Europe 
(Agrarian  Socialism  and  Landed  Property  in  Europe).  One  of  the 
journalists  who  have  most  brilliantly  debated  these  delicate  questions,  the 
late  Prince  A.  Vassiltchikof,  wrote  the  following  lines  in  a  letter  with 
which  he  honored  me,  in  reply  to  the  above-mentioned  paper :  "  The 
communal  system  having  been  introduced  in  Russia  centuries  ago,  it  is 
very  natural  that,  in  discussing  it,  we  should  meet  on  common  ground  with 
the  socialists  of  the  West,  and  that,  in  upholding  this  traditional  institution 
in  our  country,  we  should,  to  a  great  extent,  reproduce  the  arguments  by 
which  the  socialists  are  striving  to  force  it  into  the  Western  societies.  .  .  . 
It  is  an  undoubted  fact  that,  in  several  social  and  agrarian  questions,  we 
trespass  on  theories  reputed  radical  and  revolutionary  in  Europe.  .  .  ." 
(This  letter  was  published  in  the  Revue  des  Deux  Mondes  of  July  15th, 

1879.) 

t  See  Book  IV.,  Chap.  I. 


536      THE  EMPIRE  OF  THE    TSARS  AND   THE  RUSSIANS. 

north  as  everywhere  else,  to  anything  that  interferes  with  indi- 
vidual and  free  competition.  Besides  these,  are  arrayed  against 
the  mir  the  greater  number  of  landed  proprietors  and  professional 
agriculturists,  these  two  classes  being  more  nearly  concerned  in 
its  practical  defects  than  any  other.  As  an  offset,  however,  the 
majority  of  desk-and-library-men,  the  journalists  and  writers  of 
both  capitals,  won  over  by  the  theoretical  advantages  of  the  com- 
munal principle,  hold  fast  to  the  mir,  and  are  fond  of  presenting 
it  as  Russia's  anchor  of  salvation.  Is  this  always  a  tribute  to 
the  mir's  own  intrinsic  merits  ?  Perhaps  not  quite.  In  their 
pseans  on  collective  tenure,  the  writers  least  suspectable  of  Slavo- 
philism are  prompted  by  another  idea,  which  unconsciously 
becomes  the  main  one :  that  of  dealing  with  an  institution 
essentially  national,  Russian,  Slavic — or  reputed  such.*  That 
is  how,  in  a  country  sick  of  imitation,  patriotic  self-con- 
sciousness asserts  itself  and  becomes  excited  to  exaltation  at 
sight  of  an  undoubtedly  original  feature.  That  is  how  we  can 
account  for  the  almost  religious  enthusiasm  and  fervent  partisan- 
ship with  which  collective  land  tenure  inspires  so  many  of  the 
most  distinguished  Russian  writers,  such  men  as  Samdrin, 
Kav^lin,  Vassiltchikof,  of  the  latter  of  whom  it  has  been  in- 
geniously remarked  by  one  of  his  countrymen  that,  under  the 
socialist's  working-man's  blouse  shows  the  velvet  kafthn  of  the 
Moscovite  boyhr. 

In  the  conflict  which  was  raging  all  round  it,  since  the  middle 
of  the  reign  of  Nicolas,  the  Russian  commune,  up  to  the  Bul- 
garian war,  seemed  rather  to  be  losing  than  gaining  ground. 
Public  prejudice,  which  had  been  in  its  favor,  seemed  on  the 
point  of  turning  against  it.  By  temporarily  raising  to  high  honor 
all  that  was  Slavic  in  name  or  appearance,  the  last  Oriental  war 

*  In  spite  of  all  the  proofs  at  present  accumulated  against  this  system. 
Prince  Vassiltchikof,  for  one,  strives  at  great  length  to  demonstrate  that  the 
form  of  property  in  use  in  the  mir  is  peculiar  to  the  Slavs,  and,  at  the  same 
time,  that  it  has  been  in  general  use  among  all  the  peoples  of  this  race  who 
were  preserved  from  Teutonic  influences. 


MIR,   FAMILY,   AND  VILLAGE   COMMUNITIES.  537 

revived  the  waning  popularity  of  the  mir.  The  nihilistic  agitation 
at  the  end  of  the  reign  of  Alexander  II.  may  also  have  indirectly 
contributed  to  strengthen  the  village  communities,  by  removing 
from  the  administrative  mind,  for  a  considerable  time,  any  latent 
notion  of  altering  the  traditional  agrarian  system,  as  such  a  course 
might  have  supplied  the  foes  of  public  order  with  a  dangerous 
weapon. 

The  reckless  exaggerations  in  which  the  advocates  of  the  com- 
mune at  times  indulge  may  have  repeatedly  given  rise  in  the  op- 
posite camp  to  speculations  and  delusions  no  less  excessive.  There 
are  few  Russians  but  have  a  fixed,  determined,  and  absolute 
opinion  on  this  complex  question.  It  has  often  struck  me  that  on 
no  other  point  dogmatism  is  so  rampant ;  on  no  other  do  the  Rus- 
sians find  it  so  diflScult  to  keep  to  the  critical  point  of  view.  I 
confess  that  both  the  commune's  friends  and  enemies  impress  me 
frequently  as  overrating,  respectively,  its  qualities  and  faults. 
The  lack  of  moderation,  of  impartiality,  which  prevails  in  this 
wordy  war  is  easily  accounted  for  by  the  vital  importance  of  the 
issues  at  stake  and  by  the  excitement  of  battle. 

Prior  to  the  emancipation,  all  social  vices,  all  economic  plagues, 
used  to  be  ascribed  to  serfdom.  Now  there  are  Russians  who 
would  throw  every  blame  on  the  collective  tenure  system.  If  the 
great  reform  has  not  given  to  agriculture  and  production  all  the 
impetus  that  might  have  been  expected — the  fault,  to  hear  them,  is 
the  commune's.  The  temptation  is  great  to  create  to  oneself  a 
scapegoat,  that  can  be  made  to  answer  for  all  one's  mistakes  or 
disappointments.  Such  is  the  part  assigned  to  the  rural  commune 
by  many  Russians.  Public  opinion  lays  on  it  the  heavy  load  of 
unavoidable  errors  and  unrealized  hopes  ;  it  is  charged  with  all 
that  the  liberated  peasant  is  blamed  for  :  with  the  backwardness  of 
agriculture;  the  wzy^z/fe'.y  improvidence  or  drunkenness;  the  dearth 
or  high  price  of  labor  ;  the  bad  crops  ;  the  premature  exhaustion 
of  the  soil ;  even  the  famines  that  visit  periodically  certain  portions 
of  the  empire,  become  so  many  texts  for  homilies  against  the 


538      THE  EMPIRE  OF  THE   TSARS  AND   THE  RUSSIANS. 

Slavophils'  pet  national  institution.  If  we  are  to  believe  certain 
detractors  of  the  mir,  all  there  is  to  do  in  order  to  doom  Russia  to 
irretrievable  decadence  is  to  treasure  this  legacy  of  barbarous 
ages  ;  while,  to  open  to  agriculture  and  production  an  era  of 
unexampled  prosperity,  it  would  be  suflScient  to  rid  property  of  the 
communal  swaddling-clothes.*  Even  did  the  present  system  merit 
all  these  attacks,  such  views  and  hopes  would  still  be  dangerous  ; 
for  those  who  gather  and  merge  into  one  all  the  evils  under  which 
agriculture  and  rural  production  are  suffering,  prepare  terrible 
disappointments  for  the  day  when  the  sore  from  which  they  derive 
them  all  will  be  closed — if  it  ever  is. 

The  Russian  commune  is  most  frequently  and  justly  found 
fault  with  in  the  name  of  agriculture  on  one  side,  of  individual 
enterprise  on  the  other.  We  have  discussed  the  harm  to  agricul- 
ture in  describing  the  mode  of  allotment.  It  can  be  summed  up 
under  two  heads  :  short  term  of  usufruct  and,  in  consequence, 
carelessness  of  the  husbandman  and  exhaustion  of  the  soil ;  exces- 
sive parcelling  of  the  land  and  dispersion  of  the  lot  fractions, 
rendering  rational  culture  impossible.  The  sad  effects  of  the  sys- 
tem are  mentioned  in  all  the  inquests.  So  in  certain  districts  of 
the  government  of  Simbirsk,  for  instance,  the  rent  of  communal 
lands  is  said  to  be  about  half  that  of  private  lands.  So  too,  the 
yield  of  wheat,  oats,  rye,  is  said  to  be  generally  one  or  two  tcKtt- 
verts — between  six  and  twelve  bushels — ^per  dessiatfna  greater  on 
private  than  on  communal  lands. 

Supposing  all  this  to  be  correct,  reply  the  advocates  of  the 
commune,  it  is  so  under  the  system  of  division  in  force  up  to  the 
latter  years ;  but  these  methods  can  be  changed — they  are  chan- 

*  Thus  a  gentleman  farmer  from  the  south,  denouncing,  in  a  most  spir- 
ited pamphlet,  the  idolatrous  infatuation  of  the  men  who,  from  their  libra- 
ries, place  the  commune  on  a  pedestal,  actually  dared  to  assert  that,  were  the 
communal  system  suppressed,  production  would  be  doubled  forthzoith,  and 
all  demand  for  police  or  prisons  against  the  nihilists,  communists,  anar- 
chists, would  be  done  away  with !  (Deltof,  Tlte  Crisis  of  Ignorance, 
Khirkof,  1879.) 


MIR,  FAMILY,  AND  VILLAGE   COMMUNITIES.  539 

ging  already.  This  system  can  be  modified  to  suit  the  demands 
of  modem  improved  modes  of  culture,  in  proportion  as  the  great- 
er number  of  inhabitants,  the  opening  of  new  outlets,  or  the  im- 
poverishment of  the  soil — so  lately  almost  virgin  soil — make  such 
alterations  desirable.  Why  should  the  rural  communities  be 
more  impermeable  to  progress  than  the  individuals  of  an  igno- 
rant and  conservative  class  in  the  matter  of  personal  inheri- 
tances ? 

And  the  barriers  to  individual  endeavor,  retort  the  detract- 
ors of  the  collective  system,  are  they  not  the  communes'  doing? 
Who  else  discourages  all  original  enterprise,  taking  the  sinew 
out  of  labor  and  making  the  soil  barren  ?  Does  not  the  very 
security  which  the  peasant  derives  from  the  certainty  of  always 
having  a  lot,  countenance  idleness,  incline  him  to  drunkenness 
and  improvidence? 

That  may  be  true,  again  reply  the  apologists  of  the  mir,  but 
such  habits,  long  fostered  by  serfdom,  are  to  be  met  with  in  other 
countries,  under  a  property  system  as  well  as  a  climate  wholly 
diflferent  from  those  of  Russia.  The  remedy,  with  us  as  well  as 
in  the  south  of  Italy  or  Spain,  lies  not  so  much  in  a  change  in 
the  mode  of  tenure,  as  in  the  development  of  public  instruction, 
of  the  consumers'  demands,  in  the  progress  of  general  well-being. 
In  what  way  does  undivided  proprietorship  rob  the  husbandman 
of  that  indispensable  incentive — personal  interest?  From  the 
moment  that  the  distribution  has  taken  place,  proprietorship  vir- 
tually becomes  personal,  and  there  is  nothing  that  betokens  the 
application  of  that  most  deadening  principle  :  equal  remimeration 
of  the  laborers  independently  of  each  one's  eflforts  and  deserts ; 
every  worker  is  compensated  according  to  his  works,  every  man 
is  free  to  make  savings.  Why  is  it  necessary  that,  to  apply  all  his 
care  and  all  his  powers  to  the  culture  of  the  soil,  he  should  own  it, 
and  that  not  merely  personally,  but  hereditarily  ?  Is  it  not  enough 
that  the  usufruct  of  it  is  assured  him  for  a  space  of  time  suflScient 
to  enable  him  to  gather  all  the  fruits  of  his  labors  ?    By  length- 


540      THE  EMPIRE  OF  THE    TSARS  AND    THE  RUSSIANS. 

ening  the  terms  of  allotment  the  commune  peasant  becomes, 
virtually,  a  long-lease  farmer.*  Between  these  two  men,  or  these 
two  conditions,  where  is  the  difference  ?  There  is  only  one,  all 
to  the  peasant's  advantage,  which  is  that,  the  last  instalment 
of  the  redemption  debt  once  acquitted,  he  will  have  no  other  rent 
than  the  tax  to  pay  for  his  land.  If,  with  a  usufruct  of  ten,  fif- 
teen, or  twenty  years,  there  are  costly  works  and  improvements, 
wholly  with  a  view  to  a  distant  future,  which  the  temporary 
holder  of  the  land  may  not  dare  to  undertake,  does  not  the  same 
difficulty  exist  under  the  farming  system  which  is  in  force  in  the 
most  flourishing  agricultural  regions  of  Europe?  Would  not, 
indeed,  an  equitable  solution  of  this  delicate  problem  be  easier 
with  Russian  collective  than  with  English  individual  tenure? 
because,  in  the  former  case,  the  proprietor  being  a  body  of  men, 
the  individual's  interests  are  identical  with  those  of  all  the  others, 
so  their  triumph  is  assured  in  the  end.f 

To  an  impartially  minded  observer  one  thing  is  clear  :  that 
many  of  the  drawbacks  to  the  present  system  are  by  no  means 
inherent  to  it.  They  frequently  depend  on  local  circumstances 
which  react  in  exactly  the  same  way  on  individual  property : 
want  of  instruction,  lack  of  capital,  the  agglomeration  of  villages, 
and  the  great  distances  from  them  to  the  lots, — lastly  the  condi- 

*  The  analogy  between  the  temporary  usufructuary  of  a  communal  lot 
and  the  long-lease  fanner  of  a  private  property  is  too  obvious  to  need  dem- 
onstrating. Certain  defenders  of  the  commune  have  made  it  the  theme  of 
their  arguments  in  favor  of  the  tnir.  Others,  more  uncompromising,  like 
Prince  Vassiltchikof,  refuse  to  admit  this  analogy,  proscribe  renting  land 
on  lease  as  an  irrational  form  of  farming  which  must  fatally  impoverish 
the  soil,  and  invite  the  State  to  forbid  or  restrain  by  laws  this  pernicious 
Western  custom,  not  perceiving  that  most  of  these  arguments  also  condemn 
the  temporary  use  of  land  in  force  in  the  tnir.  (See  Socialisme  Agrairg, 
etc,  Revue  des  Deux  Mondes,  March  ist,  1879.) 

t  This  question  of  improvements  made  by  the  tenant  and  the  compen- 
sation to  which  they  entitle  him  at  the  expiration  of  his  lease  is  one  of  those 
that  must  preoccupy  the  English  agronomists  and  economists.  Prince 
Vassiltchikof,  more  logical  on  this  point,  would  like  the  peasants  to  be 
given  the  right  to  demand  an  indemnity  from  the  commtine  for  monej 
spent  on  improving  the  soiL 


MIR,   FAMILY,   AND  VILLAGE   COMMUNITIES.  541 

tions  created  for  the  commune  by  law  and  the  fisc.  Many 
among  the  worst  faults  of  the  rural  rigime  come  from  the  adminis- 
trative and  financial  rigime.  They  should,  in  part  at  least,  be 
imputed  to  the  State,  which,  finding  it  handy  to  make  use  of  the 
mir  in  the  capacity  of  tax  collector,  has  in  many  ways  converted 
it  into  a  tool  of  oppression.  The  taxation  itself  is  partly  respon- 
sible, as,  by  loading  down  the  common  property  under  an  inordi- 
nate weight,  it  has  become  an  instrument  of  grinding  and  torture. 
In  short,  collective  property  in  Russia  is  placed  in  conditions 
which,  far  from  helping  it  to  work  easily  and  profitably,  have 
completely  warped  and  clogged  its  action. 

There  is  one  universal  fact  which  is  admired  too  uncondition- 
ally— the  solidarity  in  the  matter  of  taxes.  All  the  holders  of 
communal  land  are  equally  and  mutually  responsible  for  them. 
That  is  a  thing  which  disheartens  individual  endeavor  and  slack- 
ens labor  as  surely  as  brief  lot-terms,  for  it  is  all  profit  to  the 
idle  and  ignorant.  This  solidaritj-,  so  highly  extolled  even  by 
some  Western  would-be  reformers,  is  too  often  the  mir' s  scourge 
and  the  greatest  hindrance  to  economic  progress.  The  industrious 
and  well-to-do  peasant  does  not  care  to  w^ork  for  the  good  of  some 
lazy,  drunken  neighbor,  who  does  not  get  out  of  the  soil  enough 
to  pay  his  quota,  which,  sooth  to  say,  is  often  out  of  proportion  to 
the  yield  of  it.  Hence  we  see  in  Russia  a  renewal  of  the  heart- 
rending sight  so  familiar  in  pre-revolutionary  France — that  of 
peasants  purposely  making  themselves  outwardly  poor  and  miser- 
able to  avoid  being  sold  out  for  taxes.*  Prosperous  husbandmen 
have  been  known  to  rid  themselves  of  this  solidarity  by  renoun- 
cing all  claims  to  communal  lands,  or  even  by  purchasing  for  cash 
their  dismissal  from  the  commune.     It  is  nothing  unusual  for  lots 

*  The  agricultural  inquest  reports  that  some  well-to-do  peasants  in  the 
government  of  Smolensk  hide  their  money  instead  of  spending  it  on  live- 
stock, out  of  fear  that  the  animals  may  be  seized  for  their  neighbors' 
arrears.  In  many  villages,  besides,  there  is  a  large  class  of  tax-payers  who 
have  fallen  behind  and,  not  unfirequently,  become  the  mir's  insolvent 
debtors. 


542       THE  EMPIRE   OF   THE    TSARS  AND    THE  RUSSIANS. 

to  be  offered  to  any  one  who  will  engage  to  pay  the  taxes — and  for 
no  one  to  be  found  willing  to  take  them  on  the  terms.  Or,  a  lot 
will  be  let  for  half  the  amount  of  the  taxes  it  is  assessed  at.*  Live- 
stock is  taken  for  arrears  of  taxes,  and  sometimes  even  the  work- 
ing implements,  to  the  gjeat  detriment  of  the  land,  which  has  to 
do  without  manure  or  fertilizer  of  any  kind.  Thence  an  evil 
greater  still :  the  dependence  on  the  communal  authorities  of  the 
members,  and  the  embargo  laid  on  the  first  and  simplest  of  liber- 
ties— that  of  coming  and  going.  The  mir^  being  responsible  for 
all,  cannot  consent  to  the  temporary  absence  of  its  members,  unless 
they  have  acquitted  their  dues  or  given  security  for  them.  All 
this  further  indirectly  results  in  handicapping  intellectual  and 
moral  as  well  as  material  progress,  blunting  the  sense  of  responsi- 
bility, smothering  originality,  invention  and  enterprise. 

If  the  principle  of  solidarity  were  applied  to  a  normal  land-tax, 
taking  from  the  soil  only  a  portion  of  its  j'ield,  there  would  not  be 
much  harm  in  it ;  but  we  know,  unfortunately,  that  such  is  far  from 
being  the  case  everywhere,  owing :  first,  to  the  excessive  burden 
laid  on  the  peasant  in  the  shape  of  taxes  ;  and,  second,  to  the  still 
heavier  burden  of  the  redemption  dues,  which  will  weigh  him 
down  through  nearly  the  half  of  a  century,  so  that  he  really  is 
called  ' '  landowner ' '  very  prematurely.  When  we  examine  into  the 
condition  of  the  rural  communities,  we  must  not  lose  sight  of  the 
fact  that  they  will  fall  into  a  regular  normal  state  only  after  the 
last  instalment  of  the  redemption  indemnities  will  have  been  paid. 
At  present  everything  in  them  is  precarious,  temporary,  so  it  is 
hardly  possible  to  form  a  definite  judgment. 

The  emancipation  itself,  far  from  improving  the  mir' s  condi- 
tion, has  temporarily  made  it  worse  :  in  a  general  way,  by  tight- 
ening the  bond  of  solidarity ;  and,   in  a  special,  local  way,  by 

*  The  number  of  peasants  who  voluntarily  go  out  of  communes  seems 
to  be  on  the  increase.  In  the  government  of  Vladimir  there  have  been 
as  many  2,266  in  fifteen  years — 390  for  the  first  five  years,  739  for  the 
second,  and  1,137  for  the  last 


MIR,   FAMILY,   AND  VILLAGE   COMMUNITIES.  543 

imposing  a  rate  of  redemption  out  of  proportion  to  the  yield  of  the 
soil,  or  by  awarding  them  an  insufficient  allotment  of  land.  Of 
the  two  latter  abuses,  the  first  is  unfortunately  the  most  frequent, 
and  it  distorts  the  principle  of  land  community,  by  transmuting  it 
into  a  form  of  servitude. 

In  some  regions,  and  sometimes  they  are  the  most  fertile  ones, 
where  the  peasants  have  gone  in  for  the  "  quarter  lot,"  they  have 
received  one  half  or  one  third  of  the  land  of  which  they  had  the 
use  in  the  times  of  serfdom.  In  such  communes  the  lot  awarded 
to  each  family  is  quite  insufficient  for  that  family's  support,  and, 
worse  still,  cannot  be  placed  under  regular  cultivation.  They 
suffisr  already  now  from  the  evils  with  which  other  communes  are 
only  threatened  in  view  of  increased  population.  Unable  to  exist 
on  the  land  allotted  him,  the  peasant  is  forced  to  seek  a  living 
in  some  industrial  craft  or  to  go  elsewhere  to  hire  himself  out 
as  laborer.  The  inadequacy  of  the  communal  funds — where  such 
exist — is  so  notorious  that  already  under  Alexander  II.  several 
provincial  assemblies — those  of  Tver  and  Tauris  among  the  num- 
ber— were  driven  to  make  advances  to  the  communes,  to  enable 
them  to  enlarge  the  lots,  while,  under  Alexander  III.,  the  State 
itself,  and  for  the  same  purpose,  founded  a  special  real-estate  bank. 

The  complaints  against  the  exiguity  of  the  peasant  lots  have 
become  almost  universal.  Mr.  lanson,  professor  of  statistics  at 
the  University  of  St.  Petersburgh,  has  made  himself  the  main 
organ  of  them,  until  they  have  become,  in  the  Petersburgh  press, 
a  sort  of  commonplace.  It  has  gone  so  far  as  to  assert  that  the 
peasant's  hopes  had  been  raised  by  imperial  promises  only  to  be 
dashed  ;  that,  while  he  had  been  promised  a  lot  sufficient  to  ensure 
his  sustenance  and  enable  him  to  take  care  of  himself,  the  lot 
actually  given  him  is  generally  too  small  to  meet  the  needs  of  his 
family. 

Now  all  such  complaints  are  based  on  a  misunderstanding. 
The  instigators  of  the  charter,  as  we  have  seen,  were  everywhere 
desirous  of  so  extending  the  territorial  endowment,  that  the  peas- 


544       THE  EMPIRE   OF   THE   TSARS  AND    THE  RUSSIANS. 

ants,  when  free,  should  own  a  quantity  of  land  not  lesser  than  that 
of  which  they  had  the  usufruct  as  serfs.  But  not  even  those 
members  of  the  Drafting  Commission  who  most  favored  the  peas- 
ant ever  dreamt  of  giving  him  land  enough  to  make  it  unneces- 
sary for  him  to  work  outside  of  his  own  lot.  What  would,  in 
that  case,  have  become  of  the  estates  left  to  the  nobilitj'  ?  By  whose 
hands  would  they  have  been  cultivated  ?  And  where  would  trade, 
industry,  large-scale  agriculture,  have  taken  the  hands  they 
need  ?  As  it  is,  and  in  spite  of  the  smallness  of  the  endowment, 
in  spite  of  the  taxes  which  drive  the  peasants  to  look  outside  for 
work,  complaints  of  the  lack  of  hands  come  from  nearly  all  parts 
of  the  empire,  and,  it  should  be  noted,  they  are  often  loudest  where 
the  mujik's  lot  is  smallest. 

There  is  still  another  obstacle  to  an  extension  of  the  peasants' 
territorial  endowment  as  urged  by  some  journalists  who,  it  seems, 
would  fain  demand  new  agrarian  laws,  and  that  is  that  in  many 
provinces — precisely,  too,  in  the  richest,  comprising  nearly  the 
whole  of  the  Black-Mould  belt,  which  is  under  regular  cultiva- 
tion— there  is  not  enough  land  to  cut  out  for  every  peasant  what 
the  Petersburgh  press  calls  "  a  normal  lot,"  and  there  will  natu- 
rally be  even  less  in  twenty  years  from  now.  Such  a  demand  is 
knocked  on  the  head  by  a  physical  impossibility,  against,  which 
all  the  agrarian  laws  in  the  world  can  avail  nothing. 

In  reality,  many  Russian  writers,  when  indulging  in  specula- 
tions on  the  proper  dimensions  of  the  peasants'  lots,  unconsciously 
start  from  a  principle,  too  thoughtlessly  erected  into  an  axiom : 
that,  under  the  collective  tenure  system,  nothing  should  be  easier 
than  to  ensure  a  competence  to  everybody.  At  the  first  glance  it 
seems  only  a  question  of  distribution  ;  one  forgets  that  collective 
tenure  increases  neither  the  extent  nor  the  bearing  capacity  of  the 
soil ;  that  capital  and  science  alone  can  extract  from  the  earth  all 
that  it  is  capable  of  5delding. 

If,  in  some  parts  of  the  country,  the  endowment  has  been 
manifestly  insufficient  to  lend  itself  comfortably  to  the  communal 


MIR,   FAMILY,   AND  VILLAGE  COMMUNITIES.  545 

system,  such,  certainly,  was  not  the  case  everywhere.  The 
communal  lot  conceded  to  much  the  greater  part  of  the  peasants 
would  be  accounted  considerable  in  any  other  country.  Statistics 
give  an  average  of  16  or  17  dessiatinas  (about  45  to  48  acres)  per 
dvor  or  family  for  the  entire  empire.  True,  this  average  is  natu- 
rally much  lowered  in  the  richer  and  more  fertile  regions  of  the 
Black-Mould  belt.  There  as  elsewhere  the  Crown  peasants,  being 
endowed  with  State  lands,  almost  the  whole  of  which  (at  least  of 
the  arable  lands)  was  made  over  to  them,  were  placed  in  more 
favorable  conditions  than  the  former  serfs  who  had  to  share  the 
land  with  the  masters,  and  moreover  frequently  elected  the  gratui- 
tous minimum  authorized  by  the  law,  so  as  to  liberate  themselves 
from  all  payments  and  dues.*  In  those  rich  provinces,  Vor6nej, 
Tambbf,  Kursk,  Penza,  the  average  still  oscillated  between  15  and 
10  dessiatinas  (42  and  28  acres)  per  family,  without  descending 
noticeably  below  the  latter  figure  ;  f  but  we  must  remember  that, 
since  the  agrarian  laws  of  1861  were  promulgated  the  increase  in 
the  population  has  been  considerable,  and  has  reduced  each 
"  soul's  "  or  family's  lot  by  just  so  much. 

*  To  relieve  this  class,  which  numbers  about  600,000,  it  has  been  pro- 
posed to  revise  the  Statute  of  1861,  and  give  such  peasants  a  chance  to  redeem, 
even  yet,  with  the  assistance  of  the  State,  the  lands  which  they  had  fool- 
ishly renounced. 

t  On  the  latest  showing,  the  communes  of  Crown  and  Appanage  peasants 
situated  in  the  eight  governments  of  the  central  agricultural  zone,  and 
making  up  between  them  an  actual  male  population  of  2,901,000  souls,  of 
whom  2,318,000  are  entered  on  the  "  revision  "  registers,  have  received 
11,092,000  dessiatinas  (over  30,000,000  acres).  To  the  communes  of  private 
noblemen's  serfs,  with  an  actual  male  population  of  2,929,000  souls,  of 
whom  2,456,770  registered,  only  6,539,000  dessiatinas  (about  18,000,000 
acres)  have  been  given.  Which  means  that  the  private  serfs  have,  on  an 
average,  about  3  dessiatinas  (2^^)  per  "soul"  to  the  Crown  peasant's  5  or 
thereabouts  (4^.)  But,  owing  to  the  rapid  increase  of  the  population,  that 
average  is  at  the  present  writing  reduced  to  2^  for  the  former  and  to  less 
than  4  (3Tff)  for  the  latter.  Even  so  the  average  is  still,  for  the  former,  of 
7|,  and  for  the  latter,  of  13  dessiatinas  per  family.  (These  figures  are  taken 
from  official  statements,  published  in  1880,  in  St.  Petersburgh,  by  the  Cen- 
tral Committee  of  Statistics.)  The  dessiatina,  as  already  stated,  is  equal  to 
about  2\  acres. 

35 


54^      THE  EMPIRE  OF   THE   TSARS  AND   THE  RUSSIANS. 

Still,  when  all  is  said  and  done,  one  cannot  consider  as  fatally 
doomed  to  destitution  peasants  who  own,  on  an  average,  ftom 
thirty-eight  to  fifty  acres  of  land ;  who,  even  in  the  wealthiest  and 
most  populous  provinces,  still  can  call  some  twenty -five  acres  their 
own  ;  whose  labor  is  at  a  premium  in  an  extensive  neighborhood. 
The  insufficiency  of  the  peasant's  endowment  can  hardly  be  held 
alone  or  chiefly  responsible  for  the  evil  plight  of  the  villagers  and 
of  agriculture.  Of  the  advocates  of  the  mir,  several — and  not  the 
least  enlightened — do  not  hesitate  to  admit  so  much.  Not  there  is 
the  root  of  the  evil :  if  the  peasant's  lot  so  often  seems  insufficient, 
it  comes  half  the  time  from  the  imperfection  of  the  agricultiwal 
methods  in  use.  Ignorance  and  penury,  the  lack  of  intellectual 
and  material  capital,  the  lack  of  livestock  and  the  necessary  im- 
plements,— these  are  the  things  which  debar  the  freedman  from 
making  more  out  of  his  piece  of  ground  ;  and  this  penury  of  man 
and  impoverishment  of  the  soil  are,  in  a  great  measure,  directly 
caused  by  excessive  taxation.*  There  in  very  truth  lies  the  main 
sore,  the  root  of  the  agrarian  trouble :  in  the  disproportion  be- 
tween the  extent  or  value  of  the  lands  allotted  to  the  peasants,  and 
the  burden  laid  on  them  ;  and  the  evil  is  such,  that  all  the  measures 
of  relief  already  effected  or  promised  by  the  Emperor  Alexander 
III.  are  inadequate  to  cope  with  it.  Not  only  was  the  land  he  tills 
not  received  by  the  liberated  serf  as  a  free  gift,  but  he  is  paying  for 
it,  in  the  shape  of  every  manner  of  taxes  and  dues,  a  most  exorbitant 
price.  So  long  as  he  labors  for  the  fisc  and  not  for  himself,  the 
question  of  tenure  is  a  secondary  one.  Had  the  peasants  initiated 
the  uniform  principle  of  individual  ownership,  they  would  have 
been  beggared  all  the  same. 

The  communes,  such  as  the  emancipation  has  left  them,  are 
traversing  a  crisis.  We  cannot  possibly  judge  of  what  they 
can  be  from  what,  at  present,  they  are.     Before  we  can  do  so, 

*  Mr.  lanson  (i88i)  gives  most  doleful  figures  in  this  respect,  in  which 
the  Russian  journalists  of  all  the  different  schools  have  been  compelled  most 
unwillingly  to  acquiesce. 


MIR,   FAMILY y  AND  VILLAGE   COMMUNITIES.  547 

fairly,  they  would  have  to  be  relieved  of  their  fiscal  fetters,  of  the 
heavy  and  demoralizing  load  of  fiscal  solidarity — and  that  will  not 
be  easy,  even  after  the  suppression  of  capitation  and  the  final  wind- 
ing up  of  redemption  accounts  will  have  made  the  commune  really 
owner  of  its  lands.*  Then,  and  then  only,  it  can  be  put  to  the 
test  and  experience  pronounce  the  verdict.  The  redemption  dues 
figure  for  nearly  sixty  per  cent,  in  the  burdens  borne  by  the  former 
serfs,  and  this  terrible  ransom,  distributed  over  forty-nine  years, 
will  not  be  acquitted  before  the  twentieth  century  has  seen  its  first 
quarter  wane.  It  is  not  likely  that  the  state  of  the  imperial 
finances  should  allow  of  liberating  the  peasants  before  the  expira- 
tion of  the  originally  appointed  term.  It  is  a  great  thing  gained 
already,  that  the  Emperor  Alexander  III.  should  have  been  able, 
without  prolonging  that  term,  to  alleviate  ever  so  slightly  the 
weight  of  the  annuities  paid  by  the  former  serfs. 

*  Capitation  has  been  abolished  by  the  Emperor  Alexander  III.,  not  so 
the  redemption  dues.  Besides,  were  fiscal  solidarity  officially  suppressed,  it 
might  be,  in  the  practice,  upheld  for  a  long  while  still  by  habit  and  by  the 
mir's  authority.  The  government  has  more  than  once  initiated  the  study 
of  ways  and  means  for  the  modification  of  the  system  of  tax-collecting  in 
rural  districts.  Unfortunately  the  calls  on  the  imperial  budget  are  so  heavy 
as  to  make  such  reforms  hardly  practicable  ;  arrears  in  the  payment  of 
taxes  might  increase  unconscionably  in  the  hands  of  a  collector  less  watch- 
ful or  less  interested  in  the  matter  than  the  commune  itself. 


BOOK  VIII.     CHAPTER  VI. 

The  Manner  of  Dissolving  a  Community — The  Peasants  of  any  Village  are 
Always  Free  to  Suppress  the  Mir — Why  they  don't  Do  it  more  Fre- 
quently— What  they  Think  of  the  Mir— How  the  Mir  has  No  Objec- 
tion Whatever  to  Individual  Property,  even  though  it  Usually  Upholds 
the  Communal  System — Purchases  of  Land  by  Peasants — Distribution 
of  the  Arable  Lands  between  the  Communes  and  Other  Proprietors — 
Utility  and  Functions  of  Personal  Property — Can  Both  Modes  of  Tenure 
Co-Exist  Some  Day  ? 

What  is  the  ultimate  fate  of  the  rural  communes  to  be  ?  and 
shall  a  decision  on  this  head  be  postponed  until  they  are  free  from 
all  the  encumbrances  which  crush  them,  and  have  become  real 
and  full  proprietors  of  the  land  allotted  them — or,  do  the  diflScul- 
ties  that  at  present  beset  them  make  it  desirable  to  come  to  a  deci- 
sion at  once  and  to  cut  down  at  the  root  that  gigantic  growth  of 
centuries,  the  mzr,  without  first  attempting  to  trim  it  down  and  to 
rid  it  of  the  parasitical  plants  which  choke  it  ? 

Few  are  those  who  demand  the  immediate  abrogation  of  the 
mtr,  but  many  those  who  wish  for  measures  that  should  prepare 
and  ensure  its  gradual  disparition.  Even  now  village  communes 
are  not  indissoluble.  The  law,  while  upholding  them,  leaves  to 
the  members  the  privilege  of  abolishing  them  by  instituting  a  final 
division  of  the  communal  domain  between  themselves.  Nothing 
more  is  needed  for  that  than  a  resolution  passed  by  the  assembled 
community,  by  a  majority  of  not  less  than  two  thirds.*    The  an- 

*  More  than  that :  the  Statute,  doubtless  with  a  view  to  safeguard  the 
quondam  serTs  right  of  choosing  the  mode  of  tenure  which  best  suits  him, 
has  an  article — Art.  165  of  the  Redemption  Regulation — which  empowers 
single  peasants  to  withdraw  their  lot  from  the  common  domain,  proyided 

548 


MIR,   FAMILY,  AND  VILLAGE  COMMUNITIES.  549 

tagonists  of  collective  temire  would  like  to  leave  the  fate  of  the 
communal  lands  to  an  absolute  majority,  in  the  hope  that  this 
would  accelerate  the  suppression  of  all  these  agrarian  associations. 
To  this  demand,  at  first  sight  moderate  and  legitimate,  there  is 
one  main  and  weighty  objection  :  the  dissolution  of  the  commu- 
nity is  not  the  only  question  which,  under  the  existing  law,  the 
vtir  is  not  allowed  to  settle  by  a  majority  of  not  less  than  two 
thirds.  The  same  rule  applies  to  all  questions  of  any  importance. 
It  is  the  case  with  all  questions  that  concern  the  division  of  land, 
and  this  restriction  is  not  without  a  good  reason.  It  is  a  useful 
curb,  a  wise  precaution  against  the  impulsiveness  of  ignorant  villa- 
gers, who  need  to  be  restrained  and  protected  against  their  own 
blunders  all  the  more  that,  in  its  own  sphere  of  action,  the  com- 
mune is  all-powerful  and  paramount.  To  leave  to  an  absolute 
majority  the  most  important  decision  there  is  for  the  mir  to  take, 
would  be  to  make  light  indeed  of  dissolution,  to  renounce,  for  any 
administrative  or  economic  measure,  the  wholesome  protection 
awarded  by  an  obligatory  majority  of  two  thirds. 

Even  with  this  restriction,  the  Russian  law  as  it  actually  is, 
opposes  less  barriers  than  almost  any  other  to  the  alienation  or 
partition  of  communal  lands.  In  France,  where  they  still  take  up 
one  eleventh  (t*!)  of  the  national  territory,  the  communal  domains 
are  far  more  efl&ciently  protected  against  any  sudden  whim  in  the 
way  of  selling  or  dividing  them.  The  law  leaves  to  the  communes 
the  faculty  of  making  certain  purchases,  but  forbids  their  alienat- 
ing any  land  without  being  authorized  thereto  by  the  central 
power.  The  jurisprudence  of  the  State  Council,  indeed,  is  wholly 
opposed  to  any  kind  of  division  among  the  villagers.  In  Eng- 
land, where  they  enjoy  so  large  a  share  of  self-government,  com- 
munes cannot  alienate  their  lands  without  the  approbation  of  the 

they  personally  pay  into  the  treasury  the  whole  of  the  redemption  sum 
which  falls  on  that  lot.  Several  among  the  partisans  of  the  mir  wanted  to 
have  that  article  recalled,  but  it  does  not  seem  to  have  had  the  eiSFects  they 
dreaded,  as  few  peasants  ever  were  in  a  position  to  take  advantage  of  this 
concession. 


550      THE  EMPIRE   OF   THE   TSARS  AND    THE  RUSSIANS. 

government.  Were  the  system  now  in  force  in  Russia  introduced 
in  France,  and  were  two  thirds  of  the  votes  sufficient  to  cut  up  the 
communal  domains  and  divide  them  among  the  members,  they 
would  soon  have  vanished,  to  round  up  the  field  of  Peter  and  de- 
fray the  expenses  of  Paul.  The  wonder  is  how  common  property 
has  not  yet  crumbled  away  in  Russia,  with  so  little  protection  from 
the  law. 

It  has  often  been  asserted  that  there  are  instances  of  lands  di- 
vided long  ago  among  the  serfs  by  the  masters,  and  reconstituted 
by  the  former  into  a  communal  domain  after  the  emancipation, 
while  there  is  no  instance  on  record  of  the  opposite  proceeding. 
This  is  a  mistake.  Final  partitions  are  rare,  exceptional,  but 
they  occur.  The  agricultural  inquest  mentions  several  as  having 
taken  place  in  various  governments  of  Great-Russia.  There  even 
are  districts  where  such  cases  are  comparatively  numerous,  show- 
ing signs  of  a  turn  in  the  tide  of  popular  feeling,  favorable  to  indi- 
vidual property  and  principally  caused,  aside  from  the  wish  to 
escape  from  fiscal  solidarity,  by  the  fear  that  the  increase  of  popu- 
lation, by  making  the  lots  smaller  all  the  time,  may  at  last  deal 
a  mortal  blow  to  the  communal  system,  unless  some  way  is  found 
of  substituting  some  other  method  for  the  system  of  periodical  re- 
allotment.* 

The  instances  we  have  of  such  dissolutions  are,  in  any  case, 

sufficient  to  show  that  the  law  even  now  is  far  from  opposing  an 

insurmountable  barrier  to  such  operations.     They  occurred  very 

*  Thus,  in  one  district  of  the  government  of  Nijni  Ndvgorod,  49  villa- 
ges out  of  190,  and  in  a  district  of  Mohilef,  25  out  of  344,  had  given  up  the 
communal  system.  These,  however,  were  exceptional  cases.  In  many 
villages,  in  many  governments  even,  only  one  or  two  final  partitions 
occurred  out  of  hundreds  and  thousands  of  villages  (in  the  government  of 
Kursk,  for  instance,  2  out  of  3,591).  It  is  to  be  noticed  that  these  resolutions, 
sometimes  suggested  by  a  functionary  or  by  a  private  landholder  who  is 
not  of  the  mir,  are  not  always  carried  out  In  the  government  of  Simbirsk 
some  communes  are  said  to  have  passed  such  a  resolution,  only  that  a  few 
wealthy  peasants  should  be  enabled  to  redeem  their  individual  lots,  as  pro- 
vided by  Art.  165  of  the  Regulation  ;  the  rest  kept  to  the  old  way.  In  other 
places  sham  resolutions  are  passed— just  to  get  rid  of  fiscal  solidarity. 


MIR,   FAMILY,  AND    VILLAGE  COMMUNITIES.  55 1 

rarely  in  the  first  years,  but  have  been  much  more  frequent  of  late. 
The  peasants  in  many  cases  were  ignorant  of  their  rights  in  this 
respect,  but  now  that  they  have  found  them  out  they  are  begin- 
ning to  make  use  of  them.*  With  the  law  as  it  stands,  the  fate 
of  the  collective  system  is  in  the  hands  of  the  peasants  themselves ; 
the  day  on  which  the  mir  will  have  against  it  a  considerable 
majority  it  will  fall  at  one  voting. 

The  moment  has  not  yet  come  for  that.  Setting  aside  cus- 
tom and  tradition,  which  have  a  g^eat  hold  on  the  mujik's  mind, 
sundry  reasons  and  prejudices  militate  against  a  final  division  of 
lands.  To  begin  with — the  crowding  of  dwellings,  which  makes 
every  man  fearful  of  being  given  a  lot  at  too  great  a  distance  from 
the  village  where  all  live  together.  Then — the  fear  of  drawing  a 
bad  lot,  without  the  chance  there  is  now  of  better  luck  at  the  next 
drawing.  Another  objection  lies  in  the  communistic  tendencies 
of  the  mir.  The  peasants  dread  the  unequal  increase  of  families, 
which,  in  the  course  of  two  generations  at  most,  would  mix  up 
ever3rthing.  I^astly,  where  the  taxes  exceed  the  income,  they  are 
afraid  of  being  burdened  with  too  large  a  lot ;  in  this  case  what 
they  dread  is  not  the  inequality  of  possession  resulting  from 
the  unequal  increase  of  families,  but,  on  the  contrary,  an  excess 
of  it,  resulting  from  deaths  or  sickness  in  families.  "  Bad  as  it  is 
now,"  a  village  elder  replied  to  the  questions  put  to  him  by  the 
inquest  commission,  * '  it  would  be  much  worse  if  the  land  were 
not  at  times  re-divided ;  the  man  whose  family  grew  smaller  cotdd 
not  at  all  till  his  land  and  pay  the  taxes."  In  short,  the  greater 
part  of  the  peasants  are  still  attached  to  the  old  way,  even  though 
they  often  acknowledge  its  shortcomings.      Of  the  noble  land- 

*  In  the  course  of  the  nine  or  ten  years  that  followed  on  the  emancipa- 
tion, there  were  probably  not  a  hundred  communes  that  renounced  collec- 
tive tenure.  But  since  that,  on  the  showing  of  the  Materials  published  in 
1880  by  the  Ministry  of  Crown  Demesnes,  140  communes  were  found  to 
have  taken  this  step  in  only  three  districts  of  the  government  of  Tula  alone, 
and  analogous  facts  are  reported  of  other  provinces,  that  of  Tver,  for 
instance. 


553      THE  EMPIRE  OF   THE   TSARS  AND   THE  RUSSIANS. 

lords  questioned  on  the  subject  by  the  commission,  several  de- 
clared that  they  had  tried  in  vain  to  get  their  peasants'  consent  to 
a  final  partition.  I  myself  have  heard  the  same  assertion  from 
men  who  are  strongly  opposed  to  the  present  system. 

It  is,  moreover,  difl&cult  to  find  out,  with  any  degree  of  cer- 
tainty, what  the  peasants  really  think  on  this  subject,  which  so 
nearly  concerns  them.  Who,  in  the  mir,  are  the  advocates  of 
communal  tenure  ?  Are  they  the  idlers,  the  drunkards,  the  im- 
provident, or  are  they,  on  the  contrary,  the  industrious  and  well- 
to-do  ?  On  this  point  the  most  opposite  assertions  are  found  in 
the  reports  of  the  ag^cultural  inquest  commission,  and  elsewhere. 
The  peasants  are  represented  as  divided  into  two  classes,  without 
an  intermediate  class :  the  rich  and  the  poor.  Towards  which 
opinion  does  each  incline?  The  rich,  who  have  been  enriched 
by  the  actually  subsisting  system,  are  usually  considered  as  its 
opponents,  while  the  poor,  who  have  reaped  from  it  nothing  but 
penury,  are  said  to  be  its  warmest  adherents.  Which  would 
mean  that  the  more  prosperous,  being  the  most  industrious  and 
hard-working,  advocate  the  system  which  would  best  ensure  to 
them  the  fruits  of  their  labor,  while  the  more  improvident  or 
indolent  hold  with  that  which  guarantees  them  the  easiest 
existence. 

Yet,  on  the  commission's  own  showing,  this  distribution  is 
far  from  universal.  For  one  witness — a  governor  of  Kursk 
among  others — who  testifies  that  the  more  well-to-do  are  those 
who  want  the  communities  to  be  dissolved,  and  even  sometimes 
petition  the  government  in  this  sense,  there  will  be  numerous 
landlords  who  say  and  repeat  that  a  few  wealthy  peasants  are  the 
only  ones  to  benefit  by  the  communal  system  ;  that  these  village 
oligarchs,  who  hold  the  mir  under  their  thmnb,  exert  their 
authority  to  uphold  it,  because  it  enables  them  to  squeeze  their 
fellow-members  dry.  One  witness,  a  Mr.  Yerem^yef,  even  goes  so 
far  as  to  aver  that,  owing  to  these  "vampires,"  only  a  power 
placed  above  the  community''  can  pronounce  the  sentence  of  abro- 


MIR,  FAMILY,  AND  VILLAGE  COMMUNITIES.  553 

gation.  A  commission  chosen  out  of  the  nobility  of  St.  Peters- 
burgh  recently  proposed,  as  a  means  to  facilitate  the  dissolution, 
that  ill-behaved  members,  and  such  as  are  in  arrear  with  their 
taxes,  should  be  excluded.  To  this  a  writer  in  Moscow  replied 
that  those  were  precisely  the  most  inclined  to  a  final  partition,  the 
most  desirous  of  having  a  lot  all  their  own,  to  sell  for  money  or 
drink,  as  they  pleased  ! 

When  the  Russians  themselves,  who  know  the  mujik  best, 
give  us  such  contradictory  information,  a  foreigner  would  find  it 
hard  indeed  to  make  a  choice  and  would  be  overbold  to  draw  a 
conclusion.  Such  divergences  can  be  accounted  for  only  in  one 
of  two  ways  :  either  the  peasant  puts  this  big  question  to  himself 
but  rarely  as  yet,  or  he  has  not  yet  formed  a  fixed  opinion  regard- 
ing it.  In  the  meantime,  the  greater  portion  cling  to  the  old 
customs  and  the  ways  of  their  fathers.  The  facts  nevertheless 
show  that  he  begins  to  revolve  the  question  in  his  mind  and  that 
his  verdict  is  not  always  favorable  to  the  mir.  It  should  not  be 
forgotten  either,  that  a  not  inconsiderable  ntunber  of  communes, 
without  actually  going  over  to  individual  tenure,  have  not  pro- 
ceeded to  re-allotments  since  the  emancipation.  In  such  villages 
it  is  not  impossible  that  the  change  may  be  effected  without  any 
harsh  revulsion,  in  a  manner  almost  insensible. 

One  thing  is  certain — that  the  Russian  peasants,  even  while 
upholding,  as  a  rule,  collective  tenure  where  it  exists,  do  not  feel 
that  instinctive,  unreasoning  aversion  against  the  opposite  system, 
with  which  Herzen  and  the  Russian  socialists  credit  them.  They 
by  no  means  see  in  communal  tenure  the  only  natural  and  legiti- 
mate form  of  landholding,  and  in  personal  proprietorship  a  mon- 
strous and  iniquitous  usurpation.  Those  who  can,  are  fond  of 
purchasing  a  piece  of  land  for  their  very  own.  The  liking  which, 
in  common  with  all  the  peasants  in  the  world,  they  have  for  the 
soil,  the  earth  as  such,  is  counterbalanced  in  them  only  by  the 
national  taste  for  trading.  All  the  reasons  that  seem  to  carry 
them  along  towards  the  dissolution  of  the  commune,  prompt  them 


554      THE  EMPIRE   OF   THE    TSARS  AND   THE  RUSSIANS. 

to  begin  at  once  acquiring  personal  property.  The  liberated  serfs 
buy  land,  but  of  their  former  lords,  outside  the  jurisdiction  of  the 
mir.  This  appetite  for  property  has  been  noticed  of  all  since  the 
emancipation.  The  merchants  also  buy  up  many  lands  long  in 
the  possession  of  noble  families,  but  it  is  usually  with  a  view  to 
reselling  to  the  peasants  in  small  lots.  The  demand  on  the 
latter' s  part  is  such  that  this  speculation  has  become  quite 
remunerative  ;  the  margin  of  profit  is  very  considerable.  In  the 
single  government  of  Kursk  the  communal  peasants  had  acquired 
land  for  two  million  roubles  in  one  year.  This  transfer  move- 
ment, which  the  agricultural  inquest  commission  pointed  out  in 
1872,  has  steadily  increased  since.  In  the  government  of  Tver 
the  peasants,  during  the  last  years  of  Alexander  II. ,  bought  up 
near  on  1,250,000  acres,  in  Tauris  430,000  dessiatinas  (about 
1,180,000  acres),  over  300,000  (825,000  acres)  in  that  of  Samdra, 
over  200,000  (550,000  acres)  in  that  of  Sardtof,  and  over  150,000 
(413,000  acres)  in  that  of  Khersbn.  And  now,  since  Alexander  III. 
came  to  the  throne,  the  Peasants'  Bank  has  loaned  them,  for  the 
purpose  of  purchasing  lands,  sixteen  millions  of  roubles  in  1886, 
thirteen  in  1887,  the  average  purchase  price  being,  in  1887,  4' 
roubles  73  copecks  per  dessiatina.  True,  the  purchase  is  generally 
made  in  bits,  by  some  one  peasant  who  has  somehow  made  money  ; 
still,  sometimes  an  artH  will  be  formed  ;  at  other  times  again  the 
communes  become  purchasers.  Vast  estates,  of  thousands  of 
acres,  have  been  known  to  pass  into  the  hands  of  peasants' 
associations  in  this  way.  Sometimes  they  keep  the  land  un- 
divided, as  common  property  ;  but  more  frequently  they  divide 
it  among  themselves  finally,  which  gives  one  argument  at  any 
rate  to  the  opponents  of  collective  tenure.  In  this  way,  many 
mujiks  are  at  the  same  time  usufructuaries  of  a  communal  lot, 
and  full  proprietors  of  a  piece  of  land  bought  with  their  pence.* 

*  In  the  government  of  Tver,  for  instance,  out  of  469,000  dessiatinas 
(1,290,000  acres),  115,000  (317,000  acres)  have  been  bought  up  by  communes, 
105,000  (289,000  acres)  by  artils  or  associations,  and  248,000  (682,000  acres) 


MIR,   FAMILY,   AND  VILLAGE   COMMUNITIES.  555 

There  is  plenty  of  room  for  such  operations.  For  the  whole 
Russian  territory  is  far  from  belonging  to  the  rural  communities. 
There  are  the  Crown  lands,  there  are  the  estates  of  the  noble 
landlords,  there  are  many  domains  of  vast  extent,  some  of  them 
colossal,  often  badly  cared  for,  if  not  quite  uncultivated,  which 
the  owners  would  be  only  too  glad  to  alienate  or  reduce  to 
reasonable  proportions.* 

It  were  highly  interesting  to  have  an  exact  and  detailed 
diagram  of  the  proportion  in  which  lands  are  divided  between  the 
various  classes,  and  especially  between  individual  and  collective 
tenure.  Now,  on  this  latter  point,  we  are  reduced  to  estimates 
which  are  as  yet  incomplete.  Moreover,  the  general  estimates 
covering  the  area  of  a  territory  in  great  part  imsuited  for  agricul- 
ture, the  averages  deducted  from  them,  could  give  only  a  very 
misleading  idea  of  the  real  importance  of  that  or  the  other  mode 
of  tenure. 

The  peasant  is  shown  to  possess  at  the  present  moment  an  agri- 
cultural domain  at  least  twice  as  extensive  as  the  entire  European 
territory  of  France.  Of  this  vast  area  the  greater  part,  probably 
more  than  two  thirds,  is  subject  to  communal  tenure,  which,  so 

by  individual  peasants,  in  the  number  of  12,600,  so  that  each  buyer  conies 
in,  on  an  average,  for  a  little  over  50  acres.  In  the  government  of  Sardtof, 
out  of  308,000  dessiatinas  (847,000  acres),  187,000  (542,000  acres)  have  been 
bought  by  individuals  and  121,000  (332,000  acres)  by  communes.  It  is  to  be 
noted  that  even  when  these  purchases  are  made  by  a  commune  or  an  artH, 
the  land  is  seldom  left  undivided.  The  new  property  is  usually  divided 
among  the  purchasers'  families,  in  proportion  to  the  sums  contributed  by 
each. 

*  There  still  are  in  Russia  numerous  estates  of  10,000,  20,000,  40,000 
dessiatinas  and  more,  the  dessiatina,  as  already  mentioned,  being  equal  to 
about  2|  acres.  The  great  landlords,  /'.  e.  those  who  own  over  1,000  dessia- 
tinas, still  hold,  according  to  the  latest  information,  53  per  cent  of  the 
entire  territory  on  personal  tenure  in  the  most  fertile  agricultural  zone.  In 
the  eight  governments  which  compose  the  central  agricultural  region, 
where  land  is  the  most  valuable,  official  statistics  reported  1,800  landlords 
with  from  1,000  to  5,000  dessiatinas  ;  141,  with  from  5,000  to  10,000  dessia- 
tinas ,•  lastly  82  owning  each  more  than  10,000.  The  number  of  large 
estates  is  probably  very  much  greater  in  most  other  regions. 


556      THE  EMPIRE  OF  THE    TSARS  AND    THE  RUSSIANS. 

fiir,  prevails  in  the  whole  of  Great-Russia.  Setting  aside  the 
Crown  lands,  which  comprise  many  inaccessible  forests  and  barren 
tracts,  the  peasant  already  holds  more  than  half  the  totality  of 
arable  lands,  and  the  proportion  is  still  more  in  his  favor  if  we 
take  into  consideration  the  exceptional  value  of  the  Black-Mould 
belt. 

In  this  region,  according  to  Mr.  lanson,  the  statistician 
already  mentioned,  the  lands  belonging  to  the  peasant  cover  from 
70  to  90  j^  of  the  governments  of  Vor6nej ,  Kaz^n,  Orenburg,  Uf ^, 
Viatka,  and  something  over  50  io  in  the  middle  region  of  the  Black- 
Mould.  According  to  Mr.  Semi6nof  and  the  Central  Committee 
of  Statistics,  the  rural  communes  already  owned,  in  the  eight 
agricultural  governments  of  the  centre,  56  ia  of  the  entire  extent 
and  66  ^  of  the  arable  part,  while  only  37  ^  of  the  entire  extent 
and  31  j6  of  the  arable  lands,  i.  e.  less  than  half  as  much,  was 
owned  on  individual  rights,  in  the  same  region.  Which  shows 
that,  in  the  most  fertile  portion  of  Great-Russia,  the  greater  part 
of  the  cultivated  lands  is  held  by  communal  tenure. 

Vast  as  the  peasant's  possessions  are,  they  are  steadily  increas- 
ing, and,  to  do  so,  they  have  not  waited  for  the  foundation  of  the 
real-estate  banks  specially  created  under  Alexander  III.  to 
quicken  that  increase.  The  transfer  movement  by  which  the 
lands  are  fast  passing  into  the  hands  of  those  that  till  them  is  so 
rapid  and  powerful,  that  various  agricultural  societies  and  a  few 
nobiliary  assemblies  have  already  evinced  some  uneasiness  and 
looked  around  for  ways  to  forestall  the  destruction  with  which  the 
mujik's  suddenly  developed  acquisitiveness  threatens  large  land- 
holding. 

In  the  face  of  these  continual  encroachments,  is  there  not, 
indeed,  reason  to  dread  an  impending  expropriation  of  the  nobility 
for  the  benefit  of  a  peasantry,  ignorant  and  unprovided  with 
capital,  or  of  tradesmen  who  have  no  affection  for  rural  life,  who 
take  no  interest  in  the  soil,  and  only  hasten  to  exhaust  it  by  means 
of  proceedings  justly  stamped  with  the  name  of  "agricultural 


MIR,   FAMILY,   AND    VILLAGE  COMMUNITIES.  557 

brigandage' '  ?  Here  lurks  a  question  of  ominous  bearing  on  the 
economic  development  of  the  empire,  and  one  which  many  Rus- 
sians, in  their  natural  desire  for  the  extension  of  the  people's 
domanial  territory,  lose  sight  of.  This  revolution,  which  curtails 
the  rural  possessions  of  the  nobility,  is  not  all  gain  for  the  countrj^ 
and  its  culture,  especially  since  the  peasant,  no  longer  content  with 
occasional  bites  out  of  the  loaf  of  huge  estates  belonging  to  a  few 
over- wealthy  families,  is  setting  his  teeth  deeper  every  day  into  the 
middling  and  small  landed  properties. 

When  we  speak  of ' '  culture' '  suflfering  from  this  sort  of  gradual 
elimination  of  the  nobility  in  certain  parts  of  Great-Russia,  we  do 
not  mean,  or  not  only,  that  of  general  civilization — intellectual, 
literary,  and  scientific  culture,  of  which  the  old  ixxne.  pomiish-tchik, 
with  all  his  faults  and  all  his  frivolity,  was,  after  all,  the  only 
representative  in  the  rural  districts, — but  material  culture,  the 
cultm-e  of  the  soil,  which  is  seriously  endangered  ;  production,  the 
soil  itself,  which  runs  the  risk  of  falling  into  hands  too  poor, 
too  ignorant,  or  too  routine-bound,  to  extract  from  it  all  that  it 
ought  to  yield. 

Exaggerated  or  premature  as  such  apprehensions  may  appear, 
they  hardly  can  be  said  to  be  baseless.  In  the  actual  stage  of  the 
Russian  people's  development,  if  private  property  were  to  vanish 
to-morrow  and  leave  the  field  to  the  village  communities  ;  if  the 
vtujik's  new  acquisitions  were  to  become  merged  in  the  lands  of  the 
mir,  Russia,  it  is  to  be  feared,  would  have  little  cause  for  self- 
gratulation  on  having  allowed  the  bulk  of  the  empire  to  pass 
under  the  control  of  a  lot  of  small  rustic  democracies,  unlettered 
and  superstitious. 

To  an  impartial  mind  it  is  very  doubtful  whether  it  would  be 
for  the  good  of  the  State,  to  hand  over,  in  the  near  future,  all  the 
arable  lands  to  communes  and  peasants,  whether  under  collective 
or  individual  tenure.  Here  more  than  in  other  countries,  the 
rural  masses  being  so  lately  liberated  and  so  backward  still  in 
development  and  education,  the  great  and  lesser  landholders  have 


558      THE  EMPIRE   OF  THE    TSARS  AND    THE  RUSSIANS. 

an  economic  part  to  play,  a  local  mission  to  discharge.  It  is 
through  them — through  the  pomiish-tchik  preferably  to  the  peasant 
— that  belated  agronomy  is  to  enter  on  its  career  of  progress.  If 
too  many  of  the  private  estates  are  not  in  much  better  condition 
than  the  miijik's  acres,  it  is  among  them,  on  the  other  hand,  that 
we  occasionally  encounter  the  soundest  and  most  rationally 
conducted  farming.  For  many  long  years  to  come,  until  the 
intellectual  level  of  the  rural  masses  is  greatly  elevated,  the  com- 
munities and  the  peasants  cannot  be  counted  on  to  improve  farm- 
ing. Were  the  entire  territory  in  their  hands,  under  any  form  of 
tenure,  the  State  would  find  itself  compelled,  rather  than  abandon 
national  production  to  semi-stagnation,  to  take  the  direction  of 
farming  interests  into  its  own  hands,  to  confide  the  tutelage  over 
the  agrarian  communities  to  a  special  administration, — in  a  word, 
it  would  be  driven  to  call  in  the  doubtful  and  costly  assistance  of 
bureaucracy.  Far  better  that  there  should  be  enough  private 
landholders  left  to  lead  with  their  example,  to  give  the  needed 
impulse,  to  propagate  and  acclimate  the  new  methods  and  sound 
farming  practices.  Neither  the  wealthy  urban  tradesman  nor  the 
well-to-do  peasant  is  at  present,  as  a  rule,  fit  for  this  mission  of 
enlightenment ;  such  men,  as  yet,  are  to  be  found  only  in  the 
ranks  of  the  old  landholding  nobility. 

The  fact  is,  this  knotty  property  problem  has  two  sides,  and  we 
should  not  let  one  blind  us  to  the  other.  The  social  question 
must  not  make  us  lose  sight  of  the  economic  question,  nor  must 
the  seeming  interests  of  the  husbandman  blind  us  to  the  no  less 
essential  interests  of  the  soil  and  of  agriculture.  Of  the  two, 
neither  can,  with  impunity,  be  sacrificed  to  the  other.  If  certain 
nations,  like  England,  seem  to  have  taken  thought  too  exclusively 
for  culture  and  production,  certain  Russians  sometimes  seem  ready 
to  fall  into  the  other  extreme.  Between  the  two  errors,  the  latter  is 
possibly  the  worse,  for  the  husbandman's  interests  cannot,  for  any 
length  of  time,  be  separated  from  those  of  the  soil  and  production. 
If,  in  a  wealthy  country,  the  wealth  can  become  concentrated  in 


MIR,   FAMILY,    AND    VILLAGE   COMMUNITIES.  559 

too  small  a  number  of  hands,  a  poor  and  badly  farmed  one  cannot 
place  wealth  or  competence  within  reach  of  the  greater  number. 

Russia  presents  this  sad  and  instructive  anomaly  :  a  people  of 
which  the  bulk  is  at  the  same  time  landholding  and  poor.  The 
reason  is  simple — ^it  lies  in  the  ignorance  of  the  people  and  the  ex- 
cessive taxation  ;  even  more,  perhaps,  in  the  lack  of  capital,  with- 
out which  production  can  never  take  a  soaring  flight.  Instead  of 
playing  as  much  land  as  possible  into  the  peasant's  hands,  his 
friends  might  be  better  employed,  perhaps,  in  thinking  out  means 
that  would  help  him  to  make  more  out  of  what  he  already  has. 

This  is  a  vital  question  for  Russia  ;  one  which  makes  itself  more 
and  more  urgently  felt,  and  which  American  competition  will  not 
suSer  to  be  ignored.  If,  owing  to  the  export  trade  of  the  United 
States  and  the  other  trans-oceanic  countries,  the  fanning  interests 
of  old  Europe  are  just  now  traversing  a  hard  crisis,  the  ordeal  is 
not  less  hard  on  Russian  agriculture,  which  is  threatened  with  ex- 
pulsion from  all  the  markets  of  the  West  by  a  rival  richer  in  virgin 
lands,  and  especially  in  capital — a  rival  beyond  comparison  better 
stocked  and  less  burdened  with  taxes  and  hindrances  of  all  sorts. 
To  the  great  rural  empire  whose  agriculture  is  far  and  away  its 
main  resource,  and  whose  soil,  in  places,  already  seems  prema- 
turely exhausted,  this  should  be  matter  for  serious  reflection. 
What  makes  the  superiority  of  the  United  States  of  America  is  not 
so  much  their  fertility  and  the  extent  of  their  arable  lands, — Russia 
also  has  her  Far  West  (or  rather.  Far  Kast)  in  the  southern  stretch 
of  Siberia,  which  can  easily  be  linked  on  to  Europe  by  means  of 
railroads  and  canals ;  what  makes  Russia's  inferiority  is  not  so 
much  the  imperfection  of  her  tools  and  communications, — it  is, 
above  all,  the  ignorance  and  poverty  of  the  people,  and  to  remedy 
these  it  is  not  enough — let  us  repeat  it  again  and  again — to  in- 
crease the  peasants'  territorial  endowment  or  facilitate  for  them 
the  purchase  of  land.  Unless  Russia  is  prepared  to  live  entirely 
in  and  on  herself,  to  renounce  all  exchange  with  the  West,  and  to 
give  up  borrowing  from  it  the  capital  of  which  she  stands  so  much 


56o      THE  EMPIRE   OF    THE    TSARS  AND   THE  RUSSIANS. 

in  need,  the  mujik  and  th&  pomiish-tchik  of  the  Don  and  the  Volga 
must  not  leave  the  farmer  of  the  Mississippi  out  of  their  calcula- 
tion. This  American  competition,  added  to  the  bad  crops  and  the 
famines  of  these  latter  years,  is  a  new  danger  that  threatens  the 
superannuated  agrarian  system,  the  mir  and  the  commune,  which 
many  Russians  incline  to  hold  responsible  for  the  defeats  inflicted 
on  their  national  agriculture. 

And  yet,  with  the  ideas  and  prejudices  so  widely  spread  among 
the  people,  the  immediate  abolition  of  the  rural  commune  would 
scarcely  improve  matters  much,  because  it  would  make  hardly  any 
change  in  the  farming  methods.  Whatever  we  may  think  of 
collective  tenure,  it  is  not  by  modifying  this  or  that  system  that 
production  will  be  increased,  but  by  changing  the  husbandman, 
the  man.  And  such  a  change — of  manners,  customs,  agricultural 
and  general  notions — cannot,  in  such  huge  rural  masses,  be  ac- 
complished in  a  few  years.  The  schools  themselves,  even  could 
they  be  multiplied  to  meet  the  demand  for  them,  would  be  power- 
less to  achieve,  alone,  such  a  transformation.  To  accomplish  this, 
there  must  surge  up  from  the  very  bottom  of  the  people,  from  the 
midst  of  the  lately  liberated  peasants,  a  new  class,  a  comparatively 
well-informed,  well-to-do  class,  capable  of  profiting  by  the  light 
and  examples  shed  from  above  and  to  propagate  and  spread  them 
around.  In  the  villages  there  must  form,  what  is  lacking  in  the 
country  still  more  than  in  the  cities,  a  sort  of  third  estate,  a  real 
middle  class,  to  fill  the  gap  between  the  former  serf-holders,  now 
isolated,  and  the  crowd  of  mujiks,  as  yet  unlettered.  The  crea- 
tion of  such  a  rural  class  is  not  less  necessary  from  a  political  point 
of  view,  if  Russia  means  to  have  a  free  government,  than  from  an 
economic  one,  if  she  means  to  raise  her  agricultural  production  to 
the  level  of  her  nattu-al  resources.  Now  it  rather  looks  as  though 
Russia  has  the  germ  of  such  a  fiiture  rural  burgherdom  in  the 
prosperous  few  among  the  peasants  who  are  buying  land  on 
individual  titles.  Another  new  element,  too,  has  of  late  years 
made  its  appearance  in  rural  districts,  one  that  seems  to  have  a 


MIR,   FAMILY,   AND   VILLAGE   CUMMUNITIES.  561 

a  considerable  future  before  it.*  It  will  become  the  nucleus  of  a 
rural  middle  class  composed  of  mixed  proprietors,  interested  in 
both  tenures  and  better  qualified  than  anybody  to  appreciate  the 
strong  and  weak  points  of  both.  This  new  class,  to  which  alone, 
with  pecuniary  ease,  instruction  will  gradually  come,  will  become 
for  the  mir,  wielding  powers  until  now  centred  in  the  hands  of 
poor  and  ignorant  men,  a  principle  either  of  dissolution  or  renova- 
tion. Under  its  influence,  which  will  naturally  increase,  the  com- 
mune will  have  to  alter  its  usages,  to  admit  new  ideas  and  new 
methods,  or  else,  should  it  turn  out  incapable  of  so  doing,  succumb 
under  the  onslaught  of  individualism.  Until  matters  have  gone  so 
far,  the  abolition  of  the  communal  system,  before  the  mujik  is  in  a 
condition  to  ameliorate  his  agricultural  proceedings,  would  not 
only  present  few  economic  advantages,  but  might  be  fraught  with 
considerable  political  danger. 

It  is  the  peasant's  own  business  to  experiment  anent  the  com- 
parative merits  and  demerits  of  both  tenures.  Vast  as  are  to-day 
the  communal  domains,  the  prosperous  and  enterprising  peasant 
can  still  find  land  enough  to  achieve  personal  proprietorship  with- 
out being  necessarily  compelled  to  abrogate  the  mit's  collective 
proprietorship.  Russia  is  not  called  on  to  make  an  immediate 
choice  between  the  two  systems,  both  consecrated  by  time,  both 
equally  suited  to  the  national  habits.     Each  of  the  two  has  its 

*  Notwithstanding  their  repeated  purchases,  the  total  number  of  peas- 
ants who  have  attained  to  individual  proprietorship  is  still  very  small,  but  is 
steadily  increasing.  In  the  eight  governments  of  the  central  agricultural  zone 
the  number  of  peasants  holding  land  on  individual  tenure  did  not  yet  reach, 
toward  the  end  of  the  reign  of  Alexander  II. ,  as  high  as  57,000,  not  much  more 
than  double  that  of  noble  landowners  (25,000).  If  we  take  the  extent  of 
landed  property,  we  find  that  four  fifths  of  it  (80  per  cent)  still  belong  to  the 
nobility,  1 1  per  cent,  to  the  merchant,  2  per  cent,  to  the  tniish-tch&nii  (towns- 
men of  average  means),  and  only  7  per  cent  to  the  peasants.  Of  these  latter 
none  as  yet  were  classed  under  the  head  of  "  great  proprietors,"  but  several 
already  came  under  that  of  "average  proprietors,"  which  means  that  they 
owned  anywhere  from  100  to  1,000  dessiatinas.  The  average  extent  of  each 
peasant's  personal  property  was,  in  this  region,  not  quite  forty  acres.  (Stap 
tistics  of  1880.) 


562       THE  EMPIRE   OF   THE    TSARS  AND  THE  RUSSIANS. 

adepts,  each  may  have  its  advantages, — social,  moral,  economic. 
Thanks  to  the  extent  of  the  Russian  territory,  both  rival  forms 
still  can  co-exist,  whether  to  mutually  complete  and  correct  one 
another,  or  for  one  some  day  finally  to  triumph  over  the  other, 
after  both  have  had  their  fair  innings. 


BOOK  VIII.      CHAPTER  VII. 

The  Communal  System  and  the  Struggle  between  "  Great "  and  "  Small " 
Landed  Property — The  Mir,  the  Peasant's  Entail — Transformations 
which  the  Agrarian  Commune  might  Undergo — Can  this  System  be 
Adapted  to  Modem  Manners  ? — What  is  Legislature  to  Do  with  Regard 
to  Collective  Tenure  ? — Can  we  See  in  the  Mir  a  Palladium  of  Society  ? 
— Illusions  on  this  Subject — The  Communal  System  and  the  Population 
Problem — Collective  Tenure  arid  Emigration — Village  Communities 
and  Agrarian  Socialism. 

Thb  competition  between  personal  and  collective  tenure  will 
be  made  more  complicated  in  Russia  by  the  habitual  competition 
between  "great "  and  "  small "  property,  "  great "  and  "  small  " 
culture.  There  is  not  only  the  question  as  to  which  mode  of 
tenure,  but  also  that  as  to  which  mode  of  culture  is  finally  to 
carry  the  day.  Habit  and  succession  laws  are  not  alone  to  regu- 
late the  extent  of  the  land  to  be  owned  or  tilled  by  one  individual ; 
the  structure  of  the  soil,  its  agricultural  aptitude  and  that  of  the 
climates  also  have  their  say.  There  are  localities  cut  up,  slashed 
into  strips  by  nature  herself,  which  seem  meant  for  small  farms. 
There  are  cultures,  that  of  the  vine,  for  instance,  which  demand 
division  of  labor,  and  consequently  call  for  division  of  the  soil. 
The  question  is,  what  system,  from  this  double  point  of  view, 
would  be  the  most  remunerative  and  the  most  natural  to  the 
country  ?  If  any  spot  on  earth  seems  to  be  made  on  purpose  for 
wholesale  culture  carried  on  by  machinery,  is  it  not  those  immense 
tchemozwm  plains,  where  there  is  nothing  to  hinder  the  machines  ? 
or  those  boundless  steppes  where  flocks  sometimes  have  to  be 
taken  miles  to  water?    True,  just  now  the  g^eat  landholders  are 

563 


564      THE  EMPIRE   OF   THE    TSARS  AND    THE  RUSSIANS. 

selling  and  the  peasants  are  buying.  It  is  a  fact,  but  perhaps  a 
fact  dependent  on  transitory  rather  than  permanent  and  natural 
economic  conditions.  There  is  nothing  to  warrant  that  a  reaction 
will  not  set  in  after  a  while  ;  that,  as  capital  becomes  more  plenti- 
ful, population  denser,  farming  more  scientific,  property  and 
culture  on  a  large  scale  will  not  rapidly  regain  the  upper  hand. 
There,  as  in  everj-thing  pertaining  to  the  economic  world,  lies  a 
question  of  competition.  On  the  day  that  large  farming  will 
prove  more  productive,  more  remunerative,  small  property  will 
find  itself  seriously  endangered,  and  not  more  fit  to  hold  its  own 
against  such  rivalry  than  are  small  workshops  and  small  shops  to 
stand  competition  with  the  large  factories  and  immense  bazaars. 

But  the  danger  is  not  here  yet,  and  the  peasant  might  lose  the 
artificial  shelter  of  the  mir  without  fear  of  other  encroachments 
than  those  of  his  own  brethren  and  of  the  "  vampires," — and  it 
would  take  these  long  to  reconstruct  large  property.  Under 
present  circumstances,  with  the  special  conditions  in  which 
Russian  agriculture  is  situated,  and  those  created  for  European 
agriculture  by  American  competition  ; — with  the  inheritance  laws 
which,  at  every  generation,  cut  up  the  land  anew,  the  fall  of  the 
village  communities  could  not  result  in  Russia,  as  it  did  in  Eng- 
land, in  the  expropriation  of  the  greater  part  of  the  peasants. 
There  is  no  doubt  of  that ;  still,  the  defenders  of  the  mir,  in  spite 
of  their  exaggerations,  have  good  cause  to  ask  whether,  if  a 
change  did  come,  the  mujtk  would  not  be  glad  to  find  one  day  in 
his  commtme  a  barrier  against  the  invasion  of  large  domains. 

For  one  of  the  village  communities'  most  salient  characteristics 
is  that  they  afford  the  rural  population  a  substantial  protection 
against  competition  from  the  outer  world,  against  the  turban  and 
industrial  classes,  against  what,  in  Russia  as  well  as  elsewhere,  is 
generally  designated  as  the  tyranny  of  capital.  The  mir  is  an 
impregnable  stronghold  for  small  proprietors.  Common  property 
is  inalienable  and  so  constitutes  a  sort  of  entail,  with  this  diflfer- 
ence  that,  whereas  family  entail  ensures  the  future  of  only  the 


MIK,   FAMILY,   AND    VILLAGE   COMMUNITIES.  565 

first-bom  of  the  family,  communal  inheritance  provides  for  all  the 
members  of  the  community.  In  both  cases  the  guaranties  are  of 
the  same  kind ;  in  both  cases  unborn  generations  are  protected 
against  the  thriftlessness  of  the  living,  the  children  against  the 
father's  wrongdoing  or  improvidence.  There  is  a  degree  of  desti- 
tution or  disaster  below  which  a  father  cannot  drag  down  his 
descendants  or  himself.  To  the  disinherited  the  mir  offers  a 
shelter.  This  is  the  light  in  which  the  peasants  themselves 
regard  the  matter,  and  that  is  why  those  of  them  who.  have 
achieved  competence  and  become  individual  landholders,  hesitate 
to  go  out  of  the  commune.  If  they  cannot  attend  to  their  lot, 
they  let  it  or  give  the  use  of  it  to  others,  looking  on  the  com- 
munal lands  as  a  safety  plank  for  their  children  or  for  themselves, 
should  their  private  fortunes  ever  be  wrecked.* 

In  this  sense  it  is  that  Mr,  Kav61in,  one  of  the  most  enlightened 
and  moderate  defenders  of  the  present  system,  could  say  that 
communal  tenure  was,  for  the  rural  population,  a  species  of  insur- 
ance trust.  It  gives  each  family  the  certainty  of  having  a  bit  of 
land  and  a  hearth.  Without  it,  the  former  serf  might  be  tempted 
to  alienate  his  lot,  to  eat  or  drink  away  his  children's  patrimony. 
There  is  no  doubt  but  that  the  mujik,  so  recently  emancipated, 
will  ofttimes  still  need  this  protection  against  himself,  as  proven  by 

*  This  is — to  give  an  instance — what  the  peasants  of  the  government 
of  Moscow  replied  at  an  inquest  by  the  provincial  assembly  :  If  the  lots 
should  become  personal  property,  they  would  frequently  be  sold  to  the 
detriment  of  the  holders  or  their  descendants.  A  peasant  dies,  leaving 
infant  children  ;  the  head  of  a  household  is  called  off  to  the  army, — an 
occurrence  by  no  means  rare  under  the  prevailing  custom  of  early  mar- 
riages ;  the  widow  or  the  young  married  woman  cannot  till  the  land  all  by 
herself,  she  has  not  enough  to  pay  a  laborer,  nor  can  she  often  let  the  lot, 
on  account  of  the  taxes  it  is  burdened  with.  In  such  a  case,  were  sales 
allowed,  the  lot  of  course  would  be  sold,  whereas  now  the  mir  just  takes  it 
away  to  give  to  a  family  numbering  more  laboring  hands,  and  when,  in  due 
time,  the  man  returns  from  the  army,  or  his  children,  if  he  died,  come  of 
age,  they  are  sooner  or  later  once  more  provided  with  land.  The  same 
thing  happens,  say  the  peasants,  in  case  of  sickness,  of  fire,  loss  of 
cattle,  etc. 


566      THE  EMPIRE   OF   THE    TSARS  AND  THE  RUSSIANS. 

the  fact  that,  in  spite  of  this  shielding  system,  it  is  no  unusual 
thing  for  him  to  fraudulently  mortgage  to  the  "vampires,"  or 
"  mir-eaters  "  the  lot  he  cannot  sell.  Even  should  the  most  en- 
terprising leave  the  commune  to  settle  on  land  of  their  own,  or 
devote  themselves  in  the  cities  to  trade  or  industry,  it  would  still 
remain  a  refuge  to  the  poor,  the  weak,  or  the  timid.  Side  by  side 
with  a  great  development  of  wealth,  it  might  still  subsist, — as  a 
sort  of  national  agricultural  poorhouse,  one  of  its  detractors  says, — 
freely  managed  by  its  members  and  not  dependent  upon  charity, 
either  public  or  private.* 

Far  from  lowering  it  to  so  humble  a  function,  the  progress 
of  wealth  and  population  may  some  day  strangely  transform  the 
use  of  undivided  property  and  reveal  to  it  a  very  diflferent  voca- 
tion. As  things  are  now,  the  communal  lands,  as  opposed  to  the 
extensive  domains  of  the  former  lords,  represent  small  culture  as 
well  as  small  property.  Should  the  peasants  go  on  breaking 
crumbs  off  the  large  estates  by  their  small  purchases,  it  would 
not  be  impossible  for  the  two  kinds  of  property,  great  and  small, 
to  change  places  some  day.  Each  has  its  advantages  and  each 
its  drawbacks.  If,  from  the  social  standpoint,  one  is  inclined  to 
favor  the  latter,  it  is  difficult  not  to  give  the  preference  to  the 
former  in  certain  regions,  from  an  agronomic  point  of  view,  from 
that  of  production.  Now  communal  property  has  one  singular 
faculty,  that  of  adapting  itself  equally  well  to  culture  on  a  small 
and  on  a  large  scale,  of  combining  the  agricultural  advantages  of 
the  one  with  the  social  advantages  of  the  other.  There  is  no 
reason  why,  some  day,  the  temporary  allotments  to  families  should 
not  be  supplanted  by  wholesale  culture  or  large  farms  let  on 
leases  by  the  communities.  That  would,  indeed,  be  a  trans- 
formation which  would  spoil  the  mir  in  the  eyes  of  many  of  its 

*  Such  might,  indeed,  be  the  ultimate  fate  of  the  communal  lands,  were 
they  not  so  vast.  But  in  a  country  where  they  take  up  the  greater  part  of 
the  arable  lands,  the  State  hardly  could  suffer  them  to  become  an  endow- 
ment for  the  destitute  and  incapable.  That  would  be  the  death  of  progress 
and  production. 


MIR,   FAMILY,  AND   VILLAGE  COMMUNITIES.  $67 

partisans  ;  yet  it  may  be  found  some  day,  should  collective  tenure 
persist  so  long,  that  this  is  the  only  means  to  keep  it  alive  and  to 
justify  its  existence.  In  this  respect  it  really  has  undoubted  ad- 
vantages over  individual  small  property.  In  a  country  of  wide 
plains,  and  in  an  age  of  steam-engines,  would  it  not  lend  itself 
better  to  rational  and  scientific  farming  ?  Formed  into  a  sort  of 
permanent  syndicate,  members  of  an  agricultural  association,  in 
which  they  would  be  both  shareholders  and  laborers,  the  peas- 
ants would  find  in  their  communal  lands  a  field  open  to  farming 
on  the  largest  possible  scale. 

Even  under  the  system  of  periodical  re-allotments,  outside  of 
all  these  remote  hypotheses,  the  community,  which  is  apparently 
a  constant  barrier  to  progress  of  any  kind,  still  could  at  times 
afford  facilities  towards  the  improvement  of  the  lands  and  the 
habitual  farming  methods.  The  authority  of  the  mirhas  already, 
in  some  few  villages,  introduced  more  rational  methods.  Com- 
munes are  mentioned  as  having,  upon  formal  deliberation,  aban- 
doned the  traditional  triennial  rotation  system,  others  as  having 
declared  manuring  to  be  obligatory.  As  school-learning  pro- 
gresses, could  not  this  concentration  of  rural  forces  be  utilized  ?  It 
would  seem  as  though  association  alone  is  capable  of  drawing  out 
all  the  Russian  soil's  resources  and  of  forestalling  its  natural  de- 
fects. How  can  we  contradict  the  advocates  of  the  commune 
when  they  assert  that  it  is  better  able  than  the  isolated  hus- 
bandman to  undertake  the  vast  labor  needed  to  bring  out  the 
full  value  of  the  national  territory,  such  as  draining  the  marshes 
of  the  north  and  west,  irrigating  and  restocking  with  trees  the 
steppes  of  the  south  and  east  ? 

It  must  be  admitted  that,  in  the  mujik's  present  state  of  ig- 
norance and  poverty,  all  these  improvements  which  seem  to  be  the 
natural  mission  of  the  commune  are  manifestly  beyond  him.  It 
will  take  generations  for  these  collective  proprietors  to  comprehend 
their  interests  and  their  duties  in  this  respect,  to  learn  how  to 
form,  at  need,  associations  of  several  communes,  the  better  to  fight 


568       THE  EMPIRE   OF   THE    TSARS  AND    THE  RUSSIANS. 

the  climate  and  the  defects  of  the  soil,  both  frequently  made  worse 
by  man's  own  carelessness.  This  spirit  of  enterprise  and  initia- 
tive will  probably  not  descend  on  the  peasant  communes  for  a 
long  time  to  come,  and  the  antagonists  of  the  present  system 
may  not  be  so  entirely  wide  of  the  mark  when  they  contend 
that  it  has  killed  the  germ  of  that  spirit  in  peasant  and 
commune  both. 

For  my  own  part,  I  would  not,  on  the  whole,  venture  to  af- 
firm that  the  form  of  land  tenure  bequeathed  by  primitive  ages 
is  absolutely  incapable  of  being  adapted  to  the  demands  of  modem 
times.  Only,  of  all  objections  brought  out  against  it,  the  strongest 
in  my  eyes  is  precisely  that  which  is  founded  on  its  antiquity. 

If  communal  land  tenure  was  good  for  the  people  and  is  con- 
formable to  natural  law,  how  comes  it  that  it  has  almost  entirely 
disappeared  from  the  wealthiest  and  most  civilized  countries? 
This  cannot  be  attributed  to  chance.  When  an  institution,  which, 
once  on  a  time,  existed  in  vast  regions,  vanishes  and  leaves  behind 
mere  vestiges  of  its  existence,  in  isolated  localities,  is  not  one 
tempted  to  think  it  unreconcilable  with  the  development  of  htunan 
societies  ?  This  is,  no  one  can  deny  it,  a  serious  point  against  a 
belief  in  the  future  of  collective  land  tenure.  Yet  this  objection, 
however  plausible,  is  not  decisive.  There  is  nothing  to  prove  that 
an  economic  proceeding  dating  from  the  infancy  of  social  life  is 
incapable  of  being  renovated  and  adapted  to  the  spirit  of  a 
mature  civilization.  Would  it  not  be  easy  to  discover  in  many  a 
law  or  custom  of  modem  Europe — in  the  trial  by  jury  for  exam- 
ple— sundry  traits  descended  from  the  barbarians  ?  And  even 
were  it  not  so,  would  it  not  be  somewhat  presumptuous  to  forbid 
human  societies  all  advance  aside  from  beaten  tracks,  or  to  assume 
that  all  nations  must  necessarily  travel  the  same  stages  ? 

In  the  modem  world,  ever  since  the  French  Revolution,  a 
great  struggle  is  going  on.  Two  hostile  principles,  tricked  out  in 
various  names  and  titles  and  which  would  centre  all  things,  one  in 
the  individual,  the  other  in  the  communit>',  wage  a  war  the  issue 


MIR,   FAMILY,   AND    VILLAGE  COMMUNITIES.  569 

of  which  is  not  to  be  foreseen.  At  an  epoch  when  the  talk  is  all  of 
association  and  co-operation,  when  millions  of  human  beings  dream 
of  reciprocity  and  solidarity,  the  law-maker  must  hesitate  long  be- 
fore he  strikes  out  a  form  of  property  which  partly  realizes  what 
in  other  countries  is  accounted  an  absolute  Utopia.  By  bequeath- 
ing to  Russia  collective  land  tenure,  the  past  has  imposed  on  her 
an  experiment  which,  once  it  is  given  up,  cannot  be  resumed 
again  without  a  violent  revulsion.  The  more  vital  its  object,  the 
more  complete,  the  more  patient  the  experiment  must  be.  Russia 
owes  it  to  civilization.  One  of  the  great  boasts  of  the  modem 
world  is  the  variety,  the  individuality  of  its  nations.  The  vari- 
ous states  are,  with  regard  to  civilization,  so  many  workshops,  so 
many  laboratories,  rivalling  and  differing  from  one  another; 
each  nation  is  an  artificer,  with  a  genius  and  tools  of  his 
own,  and  it  is  profitable  to  all  that  all  should  not  work  out  the 
same  pattern,  should  not  continually  copy  one  another.  Great 
as  is  this  variety  on  all  other  points — political,  juridical,  religious, 
— on  one  point  it  scarcely  exists  at  all,  that  point  being  the  regu- 
lation of  property.  Alone  in  the  entire  Christian  world,  the  Slavs 
show  some  originality  in  this  respect ;  surely  they  may  well  pause 
before  they  decide  that  they  will,  in  this  also,  discard  it  for  the  sake 
of  prematurely  imitating  Europe.  Alone  among  the  nations  of 
both  worlds,  Russia  is  enabled  and  qualified,  by  her  traditions 
and  the  extent  of  her  territory,  to  conduct  parallel  experiments 
with  both  forms  of  property.  The  Slavs  of  the  south —  Yugo-Slavs 
— cannot  be  counted  on  for  that,  because  they  are  less  advanced 
in  civilization  or  already  bound  hand  and  foot  by  Teutonic  and 
Latin  influences.  If  the  communal  tenure  of  the  soil  is  to  be 
tested  outside  of  Utopia  and  the  revolutionary  Icarias,  it  can  be 
only  in  Russia  and  if  the  test  is  to  be  conclusive,  it  must  be  car- 
ried on  at  least  tmtil  the  final  clearing  of  the  peasants'  lands 
from  all  encumbrances. 

In  the  meantime,  the  attitude  indicated  for  the  government 
and  legislature  towards  this  question  which  causes  such  passionate 


57©      THE  EMPIRE  OF  THE    TSARS  AND  THE  RUSSIANS. 

controversy,  appears  to  me  the  simplest  and  easiest  in  the  world. 
Between  the  two  modes  of  tenure,  so  extolled  by  one  side,  so. 
reviled  by  the  other,  the  government  has  not  to  decide ;  it  is  not 
the  judge  in  the  case  so  tumultuously  tried  before  it.  It  is  for  the 
country,  for  the  people,  aided  by  time,  to  render  the  final  verdict. 
The  governing  power  has  nothing  to  do  but  to  keep  strictly 
neutral,  showing  favor  to  neither  combatant,  but  leaving  both 
to  fight  it  out  between  themselves.  If,  on  the  plains  of  Russia, 
collective  tenure  and  individual  tenure  cannot  live  side  by  side, 
custom,  the  facts  of  the  case,  the  needs  of  the  country,  the 
husbandman's  personal  interests,  will  naturally  win  the  battle  for 
the  stronger,  more  serviceable,  more  productive  of  the  two  rivals. 
If  the  mir  has  not  sufficient  suppleness  to  lend  itself  to  the  pro- 
gress of  agriculture  and  the  demands  of  modem  life — the  mir  will 
gradually  dissolve  of  itself,  with  the  fi-ee  consent  of  the  communes, 
without  interference  from  either  law  or  State. 

There  is  no  need  of  new  laws  against  village  communities. 
Under  the  law  as  it  stands,  they  are  much  easier  to  destroy  than 
to  build  up.  Indeed  this  will  be  a  great  point  against  them 
in  the  coming  struggle.  If  anything,  it  will  be  in  favor  of 
communal  lands  that  laws  will  have  to  be  made  in,  say,  half  a 
century  fi"om  now,  to  protect  whatever  of  them  may  then  have 
survived,  as  is  done  in  France.*  Till  that  time  comes,  and  it  is 
still  far  enough,  judging  by  the  mujik's  present  disposition  in  the 
matter,  the  best  thing  to  do,  is  to  trust  to  time  and  nature,  to  the 
progress  of  instruction  and  the  free  play  of  interests — in  a  word, 
to  free  competition  which,  better  than  anybody,  is  able  to  decide 
between  the  various  modes  of  tenure.  At  the  risk  of  equally  dis- 
pleasing both  the  advocates  and  the  detractors  of  the  mir,  of 
butting  against  prejudices  and  economic  traditions,  I  must  confess 

*  Already  the  partisans  of  the  mir  shoiild  like  the  law  to  interfere  and 
put  difficulties  in  the  way  of  the  dissolution  of  communes ;  several  even 
insist  that  the  communal  domains  should  be  declared  inalienable,  as  a  safe- 
guard against  the  encroachments  of  personal  tenure,  and  virtually  be 
erected  into  a  perpetual  endowment  fund  for  the  peasant  class. 


MIR,   FAMILY,   AND    VILLAGE   COMMUNITIES.  57I 

that,  to  my  mind,  here  or  never  the  old  economists'  ' '  let-things- 
alone  ' '  principle  may  properly  be  applied. 

Supposing  that  collective  tenure  should  come  out  victorious 
from  the  present  contest,  could  it  become  acclimated  among  nations 
the  extent  of  whose  territory  and  the  density  of  whose  popula- 
tion stand  to  each  other  in  relations  entirely  different  from  what 
they  do  in  Russia  ?  Could  it  be  transplanted  on  old  Europe's  soil 
after  having  been  extirpated  thence  almost  entirely  centuries  ago  ? 
On  this  question  even  the  Russians  most  enthusiastically  in  love 
with  the  Moscovite  commune  rarely  indulge  in  any  self-delusion : 
very  few  beheve  that  their  pet  institutions  ever  could  be  imported 
into  the  West.  Not  perceiving  any  other  anchor  of  salvation  for 
foreign  nations,  many  sincerely  bewail  the  fact  that  they  should 
be  so  wedded  to  a  radically  wrong  system  which  must,  sooner  or 
later,  bring  about  the  fall  of  the  most  flourishing  of  states. 

Those  who  would,  as  do  so  many  Russians,  see  there  the 
complete  and  rational  solution  of  what  is  known  as  ' '  the  social 
problem,"  are  manifestly  mistaken.  It  might  be,  perhaps,  in  a 
primitive  country,  all  rural  and  agricultural  still,  such  as  Russia 
has  been  so  long.  With  modem  nations,  where  labor  is  evenly 
divided  between  agriculture  and  industry,  between  cities  and 
country,  the  case  is  different.  What  modicum  of  land  should  be 
allotted  to  the  millions  that  live  in  the  capitals  ?  Where  is  the 
endowment  fund  to  come  from  for  the  families  crowded  into  the 
cities?  and,  owing  to  industry  and  commerce,  owing  to  the 
growth  of  prosperity,  the  cities  will  go  on  sucking  into  their  walls 
a  larger  percentage  of  the  entire  population.  The  principal  sore 
of  Western  Europe,  almost  the  only  one  with  which  France  is 
plagued,  ^is  the  urban  factory  proletariate,  and  the  Russian 
remedy,  offered  as  a  sort  of  social  panacea,  is  a  purely  rural  one. 

And  besides,  can  collective  tenure,  in  Russia  itself,  attain  the 
lofty  destinies  which  are  the  dream  of  so  many  patriots  ?  Is  it 
possible  that,  in  the  old  Slavic  empire,  preserved  from  Occidental 
contagion  by  its  historical  and  geographical  isolation,  the  Mosco- 


572      THE  EMPIRE  OF  THE    TSARS  AND   THE  RUSSIANS. 

vite  mir  should  become  the  foundation  of  a  new  and  original 
civilization,  exempt  from  the  vices  of  the  classical  civilization, 
untainted  with  proletariate,  pauperism,  and  the  wages  question  ? 

For  certain  Russians  would  have  us  believe  that  all  Russia 
has  to  do  is  to  remain  true  to  her  history  and  her  rural  commune, 
in  order  to  bring  forth  a  society  as  brilliant,  as  prosperous  as  those 
of  the  West,  and  incomparably  more  harmonious  and  healthy, — a 
society  unencumbered  with  class  strife,  free  from  all  those  morbid 
principles  which,  they  aver,  threaten  the  European  nations  with 
premature  dissolution. 

To  what  amounts  this  claim,  of  founding,  with  the  assistance 
of  a  different  agrarian  system,  a  new  civilization,  unsullied  with 
the  taints  of  Western  societies  ?  In  reality  it  comes  to  this  :  can 
there  be  a  high-grade  civilization,  a  high-grade  culture,  without 
large  industries,  a  large  commerce,  large  cities  ?  Can  there  be,  in 
Russia  or  elsewhere,  a  prosperous  and  indefinitely  progressive 
society  if — as  is  actually  the  case  in  Russia — ^the  urban  element 
should  remain  forever  comparatively  insignificant  and  subordinate  ? 
If,  with  the  help  of  collective  tenure  and  the  mir,  it  should  be  pos- 
sible to  erect  a  new  society  on  a  wider  and  more  firmly  established 
basis,  it  could  be  only  an  exclusively  agricultural  and  eminently 
rural  one. 

But  even  as  a  rural  nostrum,  is  this  social  panacea  of  the  Slavo- 
phils and  their  followers  an  absolutely  infallible  one?  Who 
does  not  see  that,  to  work  to  best  advantage,  the  system  of  collec- 
tive tenure  needs  unbounded  space  ?  In  order  that  each  inhabi- 
tant, each  adult  couple,  may  have  a  recognized  claim  to  land,  the 
first  requisite  is  that  there  should  be  land,  free  land  and  a  great  deal 
of  it.  The  Russian  communes,  at  least  those  that  are  territorially 
well  endowed,  have  reserve  lands,  which  are  kept  for  new  claim- 
ants. That  is  really  the  only  means  of  satisfying  all  those  who 
are  entitled  to  a  share,  as  they  appear  on  the  labor  stage  ;  but  such 
a  system  presupposes  vacancies,  either  in  the  commune  or  in  the 
lands.     It  is  a  banquet  at  which  it  is  easy  to  place  the  first  guests  ; 


MIR,    FAMILY,    AND    VILLAGE   COMMUNITIES.  573 

but  it  soon  becomes  a  problem  how  to  make  room  for  later  comers 
without  crowding  out  the  early  ones.  As  the  number  of  guests 
goes  on  increasing  while  the  table  does  not  stretch,  will  it  not 
end  in  their  all  feeling  cramped  and  being  cut  down  to  insuf- 
ficient rations  ?  This  is  perhaps  the  worst  that  threatens  collective 
tentire  in  the  future. 

One  thing  has  been  ascertained,  and  indeed  is  easy  to  under- 
stand :  it  is  that  the  wzr  system  encourages  marriage  and  increase 
of  population,  since  each  family  is  entitled  to  land  in  proportion 
to  the  number  of  laborers  it  musters.  On  the  other  hand,  the  com- 
munal system,  by  setting,  so  to  speak,  a  premiimi  on  large  families 
and  partly  relieving  parents  from  the  cares  that  children  bring,  is 
apt  indirectly  to  foster  proletariate, — in  other  words,  the  supply 
of  land  being  limited,  the  population,  under  this  system,  is  apt  to 
increase  faster  than  the  means  of  subsistence  or  comfort.*  On 
this  point  collective  land  tenure  is  at  odds  with  individual,  heredi- 
tary tenure.  The  latter,  at  least  under  the  system  of  equal  divi- 
sion, tends  to  limit,  in  each  family,  the  number  of  children  who 
are  to  share  the  paternal  loaf.  Indeed,  this  is,  in  our  eyes,  about 
the  weightiest  objection  to  it.  Thus  it  is  that,  under  the  prop- 
erty question,  the  population  problem  is  found  to  lurk.f 

Not  quite  a  hundred  years  ago,  Arthur  Young,  the  English 
traveller  in  France,  wrote  that,  at  the  rate  at  which  property  was 
being  subdivided,  the  country  must  soon  be  converted  into  a  rab- 
bit warren.     Facts  have  shown  how  vain  his  fears  were.     But 

*  It  is  this  consideration, — although  it  would  strike  with  full  force  only 
were  the  family  to  be  unpossessed  of  either  working  implements  or  capital 
apart  from  its  share  of  the  territorial  endowment — which  made  John  Stuart 
Mill,  among  others,  so  bitter  an  opponent  of  communal  tenure  with  peri- 
odical re-allotments. 

\  Some  are  of  the  opinion,  not  unfounded,  that  in  this  lies  one  of  the 
causes  which  render  population  nearly  stationary  in  France.  Analogous 
circumstances  have  been  shown  to  result  in  the  same  phenomenon  in  other 
countries  also.  In  Belgium,  for  instance,  Mr.  E.  de  Laveleye  has  observed 
that  the  two  provinces  in  which  property  is  most  subdivided — the  Flanders 
— are  those  where  the  increase  of  population  is  least  rapid.  Switzerland 
might  give  occasion  to  similar  observations. 


574       T'ff^  EMPIRE   OF   THE    TSARS  AND    THE  RUSSIANS, 

then  the  French  law  set  a  limit  to  the  excessive  increase  of  the 
population  by  agrarian  regulations  which  prevent  indefinite  par- 
celling of  the  soil.  Now,  in  many  parts  of  Russia,  anything  but 
dense  as  the  population  is,  even  in  the  most  populous  govern- 
ments, the  efifects  of  this  natural  law  already  make  themselves 
felt.  In  numbers  of  communes  the  peasants  feel  cramped  and  ill 
at  ease  ;  the  lots  awarded  to  them  at  the  time  of  the  emancipation 
are  already  noticeably  reduced,  and  grow  smaller  at  each  new 
division.  And  village  communities — partly,  it  must  be  admitted, 
owing  to  bad  farming — are  stifling  on  lands  which,  in  the  West, 
would  support  twice  or  three  times  the  number  of  mouths.  If  it 
has  come  to  this  not  twenty-five  years  after  the  emancipation  and 
the  territorial  endowment,  what  will  it  be  in  a  hundred  years  from 
now — or  in  two,  or  in  three  hundred  ? 

In  an  empire  such  as  Russia,  where  the  vacant  acres  are 
counted  by  hundreds  of  millions,  both  in  its  European  and  Asiatic 
territories,  where  vast  wildernesses  vainly  wait  for  somebody  to 
settle  on  them,  there  is  no  occasion  for  uneasiness  on  the  score  of 
lack  of  land,  say  the  advocates  of  the  mir.  In  such  a  state  it  is 
easy  to  make  up  for  the  injustice  of  nature  and  society  ;  easy  to 
solve  the  problem,  unsolvable  by  the  old  states  of  the  West,  of  a 
fair  partition  of  the  soil  and  of  wealth.  In  Russia  there  is  enough 
room,  there  are  enough  natural  resources  to  smooth  out  as  much 
as  possible  social  inequalities,  to  suppress  proletarianism  without 
interfering  with  the  rights  of  individual  property,  of  the  rural 
communes,  and  of  the  Exchequer.  All  there  is  to  do  is  to  regu- 
late emigration,  or  rather  internal  colonization,  to  direct  and  lo- 
cate the  thousands  of  peasants  who  each  summer  leave  their 
native  communes  in  gangs,  going  forth  to  seek  vacant  lands, 
frequently  on  the  faith  of  false  rumors  or  lying  emissaries.* 

Russia,  indeed,  resembles,  on  a  large  scale,  one  of  her  own 
wealthy  communes,  endowed  with  land  enough  to  form  vast  terri- 

*  Historically,  this  is  probably  the  manner  in  which  the  mir  both  pre- 
served itself  and  spread — by  colonization — over  the  plains  of  Great-Russia. 


MIR,  FAMILY,   AND    VILLAGE  COMMUNITIES.  575 

tonal  reserve  funds  for  the  coming  generations.  The  steppes  of 
the  south,  certain  regions  of  the  Ural  and  Caucasus,  especially 
Southern  Siberia,  are  there,  ready,  for  a  greater  or  lesser  number 
of  years,  to  receive  the  excess  of  population  of  the  village  com- 
munities in  the  interior.  It  is  the  State's  business  to  make  use  of 
these  resources  to  the  best  advantage  and,  under  Alexander  III., 
it  has  given  serious  attention  to  the  matter.*  These  reserve 
lands,  however  vast,  will  be  exhausted  some  day,  probably  much 
sooner  than  those  patriots  imagine  who  allow  the  immensity  of 
the  areas  comprised  in  the  empire  to  mislead  them.  However  re- 
mote it  seems,  that  day  will  come  in  Russia  with  collective  tenure, 
as  it  has  come  in  America  with  individual  tenure,  and  on  that  day 
the  two  systems  will  stand  face  to  face,  on  their  own  intrinsic 
merits  and  demerits,  with  no  possibility  for  either  to  call  emigra- 
tion to  its  aid.  Then  the  critical  hour  will  strike  for  collective 
tenure  (if  it  survives  so  long),  cornered  as  it  will  be  by  the  in- 
crease of  population,  charged  with  failing  more  and  more  to  do 
what  is  expected  of  it — to  place  landed  property  within  everybody's 
reach.  For  there  is  no  getting  round  this  :  that  no  matter  what 
form  of  tenure  is  adopted,  men  cannot  be  largely  provided  with 
land,  unless  there  be  a  great  deal  of  land  and  few  men. 

I  shall  close  this  most  unprejudiced  study,  with  a  last  remark. 
In  Petersburgh  and  Moscow  men  flatter  themselves  that,  by  pre- 
serving the  peasant's  communal  domain  side  by  side  with  the 
noble's  or  merchant's  hereditary  one,  Russia  will  steer  clear  of 
the  class  conflicts  which  disturb  the  West.  This  has  become, 
with  many  Russians,  an  uncontested  axiom  ;  but  it  is  to  be  feared 
that,  on  this  point  also,  they  are  deceived.  If  there  is  not  in  Rus- 
sia at  this  day  conscious  and  declared  antagonism  between  the 

*  The  emigration  question  has  been  debated  more  especially  by  the 
assemblies  of  experts  convoked  by  Alexander  III.  ;  moreover,  it  has  made 
real  progress  owing  to  the  creation  of  colonization  agencies  and  to  the  law 
of  1889. 


576      THE  EMPIRE   OF   THE    TSARS  AND   THE  RUSSIANS. 

"boss"  and  the  working  man,  between  capital  and  labor,  the 
cause  lies  not  so  much  in  the  existence  of  the  mir  as  in  the  condi- 
tion of  the  people, — social,  religious,  intellectual.  Should  the  day 
come  when  the  revolutionary  crop  sown  by  so  many  youthful 
hands  should  rise,  on  that  day  the  form  of  tenure  so  extolled  of 
the  Slavophils  would  prove  to  Russian  society  a  feeble  palladium 
indeed.  For  the  mir,  such  as  it  exists  at  present,  with  a  whole 
class  of  landed  proprietors  outside  of  it,  has  a  great  social  fault — 
that  of  dividing  the  rural  population  as  well  as  landed  property 
into  two  categories,  two  clearly  defined  classes.  While  in  France 
there  runs  from  the  largest  to  the  smallest  holder  of  land  a  con- 
tinuous and  graded  chain  of  proprietors,  of  every  variety  of  rank  and 
fortune,  in  Russia  the  holder  of  large  estates — \h&  pomiish-tchik — 
who  stays  outside  of  the  mir,  is  entirely  separate  from  the  peasant 
communes,  and  that  makes  him  an  object  of  envy  to  them,  if  it 
does  not  some  day  arouse  their  cupidity  against  him.  A  great 
defect  of  the  Russian  commime,  which  is  held  up  to  us  as  the  most 
certain  preventive  to  the  division  of  society  into  hostile  classes,  is 
precisely  that  it  does  cut  the  rural  population  into  two  classes 
having  different  if  not  opposite  interests. 

This  would  be  a  substantial  danger,  but  for  the  £ict  that, 
through  the  land-purchases  made  by  peasants,  an  intermediate 
class  of  small  landholders  is  slowly  forming  between  the  pomiesh- 
tchik  and  the  mujik  of  the  communes,  a  class  that  is  in  touch  with 
both.  These  peasants,  who  are  at  the  same  time  members  of  the 
mir  and  independent  of  it  in  their  capacity  of  individual  land- 
holders, on  the  same  footing  as  the  former  lord  and  the  city  trades- 
man,— these  peasants  who,  in  their  person,  embody  both  forms  of 
tenure,  will  be  the  very  link  indicated  to  connect  the  two  now 
widely  separated  classes.  Without  this  intermediate  group, 
which  is  with  every  year  becoming  more  numerous,  Russia 
would  not  long  remain  free  from  the  class  feuds  which  the  revolu- 
tionists are  working  hard  to  provoke.  Even  now,  when  he  as  yet 
turns  a  deaf  ear  to  all  the  ' '  nihilistic  ' '  preachings,  is  not  the 


MIH,  FAMILY,  AND    VILLAGE   COMMUNITIES.  5/7 

tnujik  inclined  to  think  himself  despoiled  in  favor  of  the  pomiSsk' 
tchik,  to  dream,  for  himself  or  for  his  children,  of  new  distributions 
of  lands  ? 

So  that,  instead  of  closing  forever  the  door  of  the  villager's 
izb^  against  the  revolutionist,  the  mir  may  very  well  some  day 
open  it  for  them.*  It  will  be  in  the  name  of  the  mir,  represented 
to  us  as  the  safeguard  of  society,  that  the  peasant  will  be  invited  to 
' '  round  up ' '  his  lot,  to  gather  all  the  lands  into  the  communal 
domain,  t  The  Russian  commune,  such  as  it  exists  in  ancient 
Moscovia,  is  in  fact  an  easy  means  of  gaining  possession  of  the 
soil  on  behalf  of  the  masses  ;  it  is  the  only  practical  proceeding 
known,  so  far,  for  applying  to  the  soil  the  theories  of  even  dis- 
tribution, without  seeing  inequality  reappear  out  of  the  distribu- 
tion itself.  In  all  other  countries,  the  main  obstacle  to  any 
'Attempt  at  agrarian  communism  lies  in  the  popular  customs  and 
manners  ;  in  Russia,  thanks  to  the  training  imparted  by  the  mir, 
this  obstacle  does  not  exist. 

Must  we  then,  from  the  fact  that,  at  a  given  hour,  the  village 
communities  serve  as  tools  or  bait  to  the  revolutionists,  conclude 
that  they  should,  on  shortest  notice,  be  abolished  by  the  law,  as 
being  noxious  to  society  ?  By  no  means,  in  our  opinion,  for  there 
would  be,  in  such  precipitate  prevention,  great  risk  of  increasing 
the  evil.  What  can,  at  a  certain  moment,  give  the  anarchist 
propaganda  a  hold  on  the  peasant,  is  not  so  much  the  mir  itself  as 
the  vague  notions  set  afloat  among  the  people  by  the  customs 
bom  of  the  mir;  and  these  ideas,  these  vague  aspirations  cannot 
be  smothered  by  an  uk^z  for  the  suppression  of  village  commu- 
nities. So  long  as  the  ancient  form  of  tenure  retains  the 
sympathies  of  the  peasantry,  the  government  cannot  lift  its  hand 

*  In  this  respect  the  village  communities  offer  much  more  hold  to  the 
revolutionary  spirit  than  the  family  communities  of  the  Yugo-Slavs,  as  these 
latter  maintain  much  more  clear  the  notion  of  property. 

t  Since  these  lines  were  first  printed  {Revue  des  Deux  Mondes,  May  15, 
1876),  more  than  one  political  trial  has  shown  that  these  and  similar 
apprehensions  were  far  from  fanciful. 


57?      THE  EMPIRE  OF  THE   TSARS  AND  THE  RUSSIANS. 

against  the  mir  without  doing  violence  to  the  people's  customs 
and  their  juridical  conscience,  and,  consequently,  without  laying 
itself  open,  some  day,  to  perilous  retrospective  demands. 

The  Russians  are  fond  of  representing  collective  tenure  as  a 
paramount  remedy,  an  infallible  nostrum  against  socialism  and 
communism.  If  the  mir  really  has  this  property,  it  must  be  in 
accordance  with  the  theory  which,  in  order  to  preserve  an 
organism  from  a  disease,  inoctdates  it.  It  would  be  more  correct 
to  say  that,  through  her  communal  system,  Russia  was  inoculated 
with  communism,  or  rather  with  agrarian  socialism  ;  that,  thanks 
to  the  mir,  it  circulates,  unbeknown  to  herself,  in  her  veins  and 
in  her  blood.  Will  the  virus,  at  this  dose,  remain  forever  harm- 
less ?  Will  it  prove  a  preservative  against  contagion  from  abroad, 
or  will  it,  on  the  contrary,  call  out  some  day,  in  the  social  organism, 
unexpected  disorders  and  serious  disturbances  ?  Time  will  show. 
In  the  meantime  this  is  a  treatment  which  no  prudent  counsellor 
will  advise  other  societies  to  try,  for  fear  of  their  taking  the 
disease  in  good  earnest. 

Even  now,  when  he  keeps  his  ear  closed  against  revolutionary 
preaching,  the  mnjik  is  not  always  content  patiently  to  wait  for 
the  tsar's  bounty,  in  the  form  of  new  land  allotments.  As  he 
passes  by  the  lands  of  his  neighbor,  the  pomihh-tchik,  he  cannot 
help  squinting  a  little  that  way.*  Sometimes,  indeed,  in  his  col- 
lisions with  riverside  landlords,  he  tries  to  extend  the  domain  of 
the  mir  at  their  expense.  Under  the  Emperor  Alexander  III., 
who,  at  his  coronation,  had  the  loyalty  to  warn  the  delegates 

*  "  What  will  be  done  with  the  waste  lands?"  a  j>easant  inquired  of  a 
certain  Mr.  Prug^vin. — "  What  waste  lands  ?  " — "Why,  those  that  the  rich 
people  are  keeping  from  us  ;  are  n't  they  coming  to  us  ?  Is  there  not  going 
to  be  a  division  ?  " — "  It  is  said  there  will  be  one,"  put  in  another ; — "  that 
we  are  to  get  a  little  more." — "  And  where  is  the  land  to  come  from  for  an- 
other distribution  ?  " — "  Sure  enough  !  Where  is  it  to  come  from  ?  There 
are  the  rich  though  .     just  a  little,  now,  so  every  one  gets  a  bit?" 

— "  Would  it  be  just  to  take  from  some,  to  give  to  others  ?  " — "  No,  indeed." 
— Then  after  a  pause  :  "They  do  say  the  lords  would  be  given  money  instead." 
{Hevue  des  Deux  Mondes,  January  i,  1883.) 


MIR,   FAMILY,   AND    VILLAGE   COMMUNITIES.  579 

of  the  peasantry  that  the  property  question  was  settled  for  good 
and  all,  there  have  been  agrarian  riots  in  various  provinces. 
More  than  once  the  military  had  to  be  called  in  to  repress  them  ; 
the  authorities  took  advantage  of  the  laws  issued  against  the 
revolutionists  to  send  the  leaders  before  a  council  of  war.  These 
things  are  hushed  up  as  much  as  possible  ;  the  papers  have  strict 
orders  to  keep  silence  on  all  affairs  of  the  kind.  Thus  in  1886, 
there  was  a  riot  in  the  government  of  Penza ;  in  1887,  in  that  of 
Riaz^ ;  in  1888,  in  that  of  Kaz^n.  Each  time  the  troops  were 
compelled  to  charge,  and  the  ringleaders  were  tried  by  military 
commissions,  so  that,  notwithstanding  the  abolition  of  the  death 
penalty,  they  were  condemned  to  death,  and  hung,  it  is  averred, 
twelve  or  fifteen  at  a  time.  With  less  severity,  it  might  have 
been  difficult  to  maintain  social  peace. 

As  to  the  belief  which  makes  of  collective  tenure  a  sure 
antidote  against  the  revolutionary  poison,  warranted  to  keep 
Russia  safe  from  all  political  epidemics,  that  is  a  prejudice,  the 
fallacy  of  which  has  been  too  clearly  demonstrated  by  the  innum- 
erable plots  and  audacious  attempts  of  the  last  years  of  Alexander 
II.  Mines  and  bombs,  nitro-glycerine  and  dynamite  have  under- 
taken to  undeceive  the  most  confiding.  Against  the  slow  mining 
process  of  nihilism  and  revolutionary  explosions,  the  Moscovite 
mir  is  manifestly  an  insufficient  insurance.  After  the  assassina- 
tion of  the  L/iberator  of  the  serfs,  no  Russian  can  assert  that  all 
the  periodical  troubles  which  harass  the  West  come  from  the 
Occidental  form  of  land  tenure ;  that  social  questions  are  the  only 
ones  that  breed  revolutions  ;  that,  in  order  to  escape  violent  com- 
motions, Russia  only  has  to  place  the  land  within  the  reach  of  all. 


58o      THE  EMPIRE  OF   THE    TSARS  AND   THE  RUSSIANS, 
APPENDIX  TO  BOOK  VIII. 

The  following  brief  selection  from  Vladimir  Dahl's  famous  collection  of 
popular  sayings,  proverbs,  adages,  riddles,  etc.,  may  not  be  unwelcome,  as 
setting  forth,  after  the  terse  and  pointed  fashion  of  their  kind,  the  people's 
own  estimation  of  their  principal  national  institution.  It  will  be  noticed 
that  it  is  by  no  means  one-sided  or  exclusively  admiring. 

What  the  mir  has  settled,  is  God's  own  judgment. 

As  the  mir  has  resolved,  so  it  shall  be. 

The  tnir  will  stand  up  for  itself.  You  can't  be  the  winner  in  a  suit 
against  the  mir. 

If  the  mir  gives  a  whoop,  the  forests  shall  groan  and  bend. 

The  mir  is  subject  to  no  jurisdiction  but  God's. 

God  alone  can  judge  the  m,ir. 

The  mir  is  inviolable,  but  the  wtV-members  get  thrashed. 

A  man  of  might  is  the  mir.     None  may  gainsay  it. 

Should  the  m,ir  heave  a  sigh,  it  will  reach  the  Tsar's  ears. 

If  the  mir  goes  mad,  it  can't-  be  put  in  a  strait-jacket  (literally — 
"chained  up"). 

There  is  no  guilt  in  the  mir:  how  should  the  guilty  be  picked  out  in 
the  crowd  ? 

All  for  one  and  one  for  all :  that 's  the  mir. 

When  the  mir  comes  together,  it  is  ready  to  fight  that  minute ;  when  it 
separates,  all  it  does  is  to  lie  on  the  stove-bench. 

The  m,ir  is  mighty  as  water  and  silly  as  a  babe. 

One  or  other  mujik  may  be  wise,  but  the  m,ir  is  a  fooL 

It  was  the  people's  voice  that  condemned  Christ. 


INDEX. 


Alans,  extinct  tribe,  of  Finno-Turk- 

ish  blood,  78 
Alexander  I.,  the  dreamer,  301,  302 
Alexander    II.,   the    Liberator   and 

reformer,  303,  304 
AUophyl  races,  see  Turanian. 
Antes,  an  ancient  Slavic  tribe,  95 
Appanage  system,  250 
Aral  Sea,  second  largest  lake  in  the 

world,  5  ;  remnant  of  ancient  sea,  9 
Ardshin,  the  typical  commune,  523- 

525 ;   deductions  it  leads  to,  525- 

528 
Avars,   an  extinct  tribe  of   Finnic 

race,  67  ;  partly  Mongolian,  78 


B 


Baikal,    Siberian    lake,    largest    in 

Asia,  5 
Bakiinin,  the   founder  of  militant 

nihilism,  200,  201 
Baltic  Provinces,    Germans  in,   69, 

124,  127-129 
Baltic  Sea,  at  one  time  united  with 

the  Black,  7 
Bashkirs,  probably  a  Finnic  tribe, 

along  the  Ural,  70 ;  partly  Turkish 

or  Tatar,  78 
Baths,  Russian,  159  (appendix) 
Biarmian  branch  of  the  Finnic  race, 

comprises      Permians,      Voti^ks, 

Zyrians,  68 


Bieloruss,  see  White-Russians. 
Black    Mould    Zone,   the    southern 

boundary  of  Finnic  erratic  blocks, 

8 ;  described,  22-24 
Black  Sea,  at  one  time  united  with 

the  Baltic,  7 
Bohemians,  see  Tchekhs. 
Bo-russi  (or  Po-russi),  name  of  the 

ancient  Prussians  ;    its  meaning, 

106,  note 
Bulgars,  old,  of  Finnic  race,  67  ;  of 

the      Volga,     of     Finno-Turkish 

blood,  78  ;  modern,  partly  Slavs, 

of  the  southern  branch,  103 


Caspian  Sea,  largest  lake  in  the 
world,  5  ;  remnant  of  ancient  sea, 

9 

Catherine  II.,  the  true  successor  of 
Peter  the  Great,  292,  293  ;  organ- 
izes the  nobility  and  gives  it  privi- 
leges, 313,  397,  398 ;  and  the  town 
bourgeoisie,  332 

Caucasian  region,  its  wealth  and 
beauty,  30-32 

Caucasus,  southern  bulwark  of  Rus- 
sia, 5 

Central  Asia,  its  highlands  the  east- 
em  limit  of  Russia,  5  ;  influences 
Russia's  climate,  7 

Character,  national  Russian,  138- 
144 ;  aflfected  by  the  climate,  140, 
i6i  ;  described  at  large,  162-170 ; 


581 


582 


INDEX. 


how  influenced  by  the  physical 
natnre  of  the  country,  170-178  ; 
by  the  alternations  of  the  seasons, 
187 ;  full  of  contrasts  and  ex- 
tremes, 188-194 

Christianity,  introduced  by  Olga 
and  Vladimir,  from  Constantino- 
ple, 246 

Church,  national  Russian,  fortified 
under  the  Tatar  domination,  259 

Climate,  continental,  always  in  ex- 
tremes, 6 ;  wanting  in  moisture, 
8  ;  of  the  northern  or  forest  zone, 
18 ;  of  the  steppe  zone,  21,  22  ;  its 
injurious  action  on  the  national 
character,  140,  143 ;  on  mortality, 
149 ;  on  popular  habits,  150-154 ; 
on  the  national  character  again, 
161-170 

Colonization  of  Russia,  by  Russians, 
44-46 ;  by  Germans,  46  ;  by  Greco- 
Slavs,  47,  48 ;  by  Great-Russians, 
109,  no 

Commune,  rural,  discovered  in  1842, 
476 ;  will  it  survive  the  present 
crisis  ?  503,  504 ;  its  mutual  soli- 
darity in  the  matter  of  taxes,  521- 
523  :  description  of  a  typical  one, 
523-525  ;  its  control  over  its  mem- 
bers based  on  fiscal  solidarity,  525- 
531  ;  often  oppressive,  541,  542  ; 
not  bettered  by  emancipation, 
542-545  ;  yet  not  fatally  doomed, 
546,  547  ;  its  immediate  abolition 
unadvisable,  560-562 

Cosacks,  sons  of  the  steppe,  natu- 
rally antagonistic  to  the  north  or 
forest  zone,  16  ;  of  the  Black  Sea — 
I^ittle  Russians,  117  ;  of  the  Don 
and  Ural — Great  Russians,  ib.;  a 
distinct  warrior  caste,  317 ;  their 
free  land-tenure  on  the  Don,  481  ; 
their  communal  organization  in 
the  Ural,  505-50? 

Crimea,  the  special  home  of  Russian 
Tatars,  88 


Croats,  Slavs  of  the  southern  branch, 
103 


Danilefsky,  from  his  book,  Russia 
and  Europe,  13,  237-240 

DashkofF  Museum,  57 

Diet,  peasants',  145-155  (appendix) ; 
lenten,  156-158  (appendix)  ;  injuri- 
ous to  health  and  life,  148 

Don,  river  in  southern  Russia,  5 ; 
proposed  by  some  as  frontier  line,  8 

Drinks,  national  Russian,  145,  146 

Drunkenness  of  the  Russian  people 
much  exaggerated,  146;  its  de- 
crease, 147 

Dvorihitstvo,  see  Nobility. 


E 


Bhsts  (Esthonians),  a  Finnic  tribe 
on  the  Baltic,  69 

Emancipation,  Nicolas'  pet  scheme, 
418  ;  supported  by  publfc  opinion, 
419-421  ;  how  prepared,  422-426  ; 
its  main  objects,  426 ;  its  basis, 
428 ;  its  standard  of  territorial 
endowment,  433-435 ;  its  manner 
of  proceeding,  436-441 ;  breeds 
general  disappointment,  450-455, 
460  ;  how  it  aflFects  the  people's 
character  and  habits,  460-465; 
its  temporary  evil  eflFects  on  the 
condition  of  the  rural  communes 
(mir),  542-545 

Esthonians,  see  Ehsts. 

Ethnological  collection  in  the  Dash- 
koflF  Museum,  57-59  ;  three  princi- 
pal elements  of  Russia's  popula- 
tion, 63 


Finns,  one  of  the  three  main  ethnical 
elements  of  Russia's  population, 


INDEX. 


583 


63;  identical  with  the  Tchud,  ib.; 
of  Turanian  stock,  Uralo-Altaic 
branch,  64;  classed  with  Mongols, 
65  ;  their  many  tribes  and  their 
wide  diffusion,  66-70 ;  their  char- 
acteristics, 71-76 ;  their  personal 
appearance,  79,  note 
Forest  zone,  i6-i8 


Germans,  their  small  numbers  in  the 
Baltic  Provinces,  69,  note,  124, 
127-129 ;  oppose  the  Russian  ele- 
ment, 70,  note;  their  oppression 
of  the  Baltic  Ehsts  and  Letts,  124  ; 
their  appropriation  of  certain 
trades,  125 ;  their  arrogance  to 
Russians,  125,  126;  gain  ground  in 
all  the  western  borderland,  129 

Great-Russians  (Velikoruss)  the 
chief  division  of  the  Russian  peo- 
ple, 107 ;  their  area  the  centre, 
north,  and  northeast  of  Russia, 
ib.;  the  most  mixed  with  Finnic 
blood,  109 ;  yet  predominantly 
Slavs,  111-113;  the  great  colo- 
nizers of  Russia,  109,  no;  their 
physical  characteristics,  114 

Guilds,  merchant,  introduced  by 
Peter  the  Great,  338 ;  their  consti- 
tution, 338-340 


Herzen,  patriot  and  exile,  199,  200 

Hierarchy,  social,  as  regulated  by 
Peter  the  Great,  313  ;  its  subdi- 
visions and  development,  311-325 

Hungars  (later  Hungarians,  or  Mag- 
yars), of  Finnic  race,  67 ;  their 
mingling  with  Aryan  elements  and 
consequent  improvement,  75,  76 

Huns,  of  Finnic  race,  67  ;  yet  in 
great  part  Turkish,  78 


Ivan  IV.,  the  Terrible,  the  conqueror 
of  Kazin,  268 


Kalevala,  the  Finnic  Epic,  73,  note  ; 
76,  note 

Kalmyks,  an  Asiatic  tribe,  dwelling 
by  the  Azof  Sea,  30 ;  on  the  l/ower 
Volga,  63  ;  of  Mongolian  origin, 
79  ;  their  history,  ib. 

Karaites,  a  Jewish  sect,  57,  58 

Karels,  a  Finnic  tribe  in  the  West 
of  Russia,  69 

Katkof,  Slavophil  and  publicist,  the 
champion  of  classical  education, 
205 

Kirghiz,  an  Asiatic  tribe,  dwelling 
in  the  Azof  and  Caspian  steppe- 
regions,  27,  30 

Kirghiz  steppe,  once  the  bed  of  the 
Caspian  Sea,  29 

Kniaz,  the  only  national  Russian 
title,  85,  note;  its  history,  154 
(appendix) 

Knifes  (Princes),  the  lineal  de- 
scendants of  the  appanage-princes, 
the  only  national  aristocracy,  353- 
355 

Koltsdf,  poet,  "the  Russian  Bums," 
143,  note. 

Klremlin  or  Kreml,  meaning  of  the 
word,  39,  note  2 

Kryldf  (Ivan  Andr^yevitch),  the 
great  fabulist,  379,  380 

KurganSy  also  called  Moghili,  sepul- 
chral mounds  of  ancient  peoples,  19 


I/ddoga,    Russian    lake,    largest    in 

Europe,  5,  18 
Lakes,  Russian,  largest  in  the  world  : 

Ladoga,  On^ga,  Baikal,  Caspian, 


584 


INDEX. 


Aral,  5 ;  eleven  hundred  pond-like 
lakes  in  Arkhangelsk,  i8 

Lands,  communal,  how  divided  and 
re-allotted,  510-520;  their  excessive 
parcelling,  518-520 

Land-tenure,  collective  or  commu- 
nal, the  national  form,  474 ;  un- 
changed by  emancipation,  475  ; 
historical  review  of,  476-482  ;  its 
territorial  distribution,  482-485 ;  its 
inefficiency,  531-533;  its  advocates 
and  detractors,  534-536 ;  public 
opinion  divided  about  it,  536-540  ; 
peasants  diflFer  about  it,  552,  553 ; 
it  shelters  them  from  absolute 
destitution,  564-566  ;  unfavorable 
to  the  spirit  of  individual  enter- 
prise, 568 ;  not  to  be  abolished 
rashly,  568-571 ;  nor  to  be  con- 
sidered a  universal  panacea,  571- 
574 ;  its  impending  struggle  with 
individual  tenure,  575  ;  not  a  suflGi- 
cient  safeguard  against  class  con- 
flicts, 575-579 

Lapps,  a  Finnic  tribe,  65  ;  the  most 
typical,  69 

Lett,  one  of  the  three  languages 
spoken  by  the  Letto-Lithuanians, 
105 

Letto-Lithuanian  group,  in  the  north- 
western region  of  Russia,  Indo- 
European,  but  not  exactly  Slavs, 
104  ;  their  scant  numbers  and  re- 
markable languages,  105 

Letts,  inhabit  Curland  and  Livonia, 
106 

Lezghians,  Caucasian  tribe,  63 

Liakhs,  Slavs  of  the  western  branch, 
104 

Lithuanians,  formerly  a  great  nation, 
105 

Little-Russians  (Maloross),  occupy 
the  southwestern  part  of  Russia, 
108;  their  characteristics,  115-117  ; 
Russians  beyond  doubt,  117-119 

Livonians,  see  Livs. 


Livs  (Livonians),  a  Finnic  tribe  on 
the  Baltic,  69 


M 


Magyars,  see  Hungars. 

Maloross,  see  Little-Russians, 

Mir,   the  assembly   of  the    village 

elders,  or  heads  of  families  ;  see 

Commune. 
"iWr-eaters,"  or  village  vampires, 

529-531.  566 

Moghili,  see  Kurgd.ns. 

Mongolian  1  », 

,,         ,  -,  }-race,  ^e-^  Turanian. 

Mongoloid  •» 

Mongols,  Turanian  race,  Uralo- Altaic 

branch,    64 ;    much    mixed    with 

Turks  or  Tatars,  78 
Mordvins,    a    Finnic    tribe    of   the 

southern  branch,  in  the  centre  of 

Russia,  68 
Moscow  (Moscovia),  the  rise  of,  265- 

268 
Mountains,  scarcity  of,  7  ;   Ural,  7, 

9,  10,  16  ;  Valday,  17 

N 

Nicolas,  the  despot,  302 

Niekrdssof,  poet  and  editor,  202,  note 

Nietchdyef,  revolutionist,  tool  of 
Bak^nin,  201 

Nihilism,  originates  in  German  phi- 
losophy, 195  ;  not  peculiar  to  Rus- 
sia, 196 ;  its  three  stages,  197,  198 ; 
its  repulsive  coarseness,  203-206 ; 
its  affinities  with  mysticism,  207- 
209  ;  its  apostles,  212-214 ;  chiefly 
aflFects  the  youth  of  both  sexes, 
215-217  ;  its  women  converts,  217- 
222 

Nobility  {dvori&nstvo),  its  peculiar 
character,  347,  348 ;  its  constitu- 
tion, 349-355  ;  its  laws  of  succession, 
355-361  ;  its  origin — the  drujina 
and  the  boyd.r,  362-366  ;  its  land 
endowments,  366-368  ;  its  dissen- 


INDEX. 


585 


sions  and  jealousies,  368-372  ;  in- 
vaded by  bureaucracy,  373  fF;  its 
protest  in  the  shape  of  exclusive- 
ness  and  European  cosmopolitism, 
381-387  ;  its  consequent  estrange- 
ment from  the  people,  388 ;  its 
privileges,  390-396 ;  its  lack  of 
cohesion  and  corporate  spirit,  397- 
402 
Nogjlys,  a  Tatar  tribe,  in  the  Azof 
and  Caspian  steppe-region,  27,  30 ; 
partly  Mongolian,  78 

O 

Obi,  Siberian  river,  5  ;  proposed  by 
some  as  frontier  line,  8 

"Occidentals  "(Zd^padnikiJ,  the  par- 
tisans of  Western  Europe,  227 ; 
their  views  of  Russian  history  and 
civilization,  ib. ;  their  standing 
conflict  against  Slavophilism,  236, 

237 
On^ga,  Russian  lake,  second  largest 

in  Europe,  5 
Osti£lks,  a  Finnic  tribe  in  Siberia,  67 


Panslavism,  its  moderate  ambition, 
103 

Peasants,  the  hope  of  the  country, 
403-409 ;  their  condition  before 
serfdom,  410 ;  "  made  fast  to  the 
soil,"  411-413  ;  their  condition  in 
serfdom,  414-418 ;  their  views  of 
the  land  question,  429  ;  their  dis- 
content and  distrust,  429-432 ; 
placed  "under  temporary  obliga- 
tions," 442  ;  their  suUenness  and 
blunders,  445-449 ;  their  pitiable 
plight,  456-459  ;  how  aflFected  in 
their  habits  by  the  emancipation, 
460-465  ;  their  friendly  relations 
to  the  former  masters,  466,  467  ; 
their  unreasonable  expectations, 
468-473 ;  their  home-life  and  family 


organization,  487-503  ;  their  grow- 
ing appetite  for  individual  prop- 
erty, 553-556  ;  they  buy  out  the 
nobility  in  places,  to  the  detriment 
of  farming,  556-560 

Permians,  a  Finnic  tribe  of  the  Biar- 
mian  branch,  on  the  K^ma,  68 

Peter  the  Great,  the  typical  repre- 
sentative of  the  national  character, 
192-194  ;  history  of  his  work,  282- 
304;  his  boyhood  among  foreign- 
ers, 285 ;  his  travels,  287 ;  his 
versatility,  287,  288  ;  his  reforms, 
289,  290  ;  his  successors,  291-293  ; 
criticism  on  his  methods  and  work, 
294-303  ;  introduces  merchant 
guilds,  338  ;  creates  the  Table  of 
Ranks,  373 

Plssemsky,  novelist,  author  of  In 
the  Whirlpool,  187 

Poles,  Slavs  of  the  western  branch, 
104  ;  source  of  their  antagonism 
with  the  Russians,  ib.  ;  at  present 
dread  German  rule  more,  131 

Polish  question,  129-137 

Population,  its  sparseness  in  the 
north,  18 ;  in  the  fertile  steppe 
region,  28  ;  in  the  Kalmyk  steppe, 
30 ;  uneven  density  of,  38-40  ; 
statistical  averages  consequently 
misleading,  41  ;  on  the  future  in- 
crease of,  41,  42  ;  ethnic  elements 
ofj  57-62  ;  urban  and  rural,  322, 
325,  327-330 ;  of  towns  and  cities 
with  their  class-divisions,  334-345 

Property,  undivided  in  peasant  fami- 
lies, 490-492  ;  when  and  how  di- 
vided, 493-495,  497-500 

Pskof,  submission  of,  to  Tsar  Vassili, 
272-274 

R 

Re-allotment,  periodical,  of  commu- 
nal lands,  511  ;  at  various  intervals, 
5 1 1-5 13  ;  its  evil  eflfects  when  too 
frequent,  573-575 


586 


INDEX. 


Redemption  by  the  peasants  of  the 
lands  taken  from  the  landlords, 
428,  438-441  ;  proceeds  slowly, 
under  difficulties,  443-445 ;  assisted 
by  the  State,  447-449 

Reforms,  their  democratical  ten- 
dency, 306,  307,  310 

Religion,  distribution  among  Finns, 
Tatars,  and  Mongols,  80 ;  a  barrier 
between  Russians  and  Tatars,  81, 
82,  84-86 ;  its  influence  on  the  po- 
sition of  the  Tatars,  90,  91 

Romdnofs,  called  to  the  throne,  270 

Roxolans,  an  extinct  tribe  of  Finno- 
Turkish  blood,  78 

Russia,  other  nations'  ignorance  of, 
and  prejudice  against,  1-3 ;  her 
civilization  the  outcome  of  her 
past,  3  ;  her  vast  extent,  4,  5  ;  her 
structure  Asiatic,  6,  8 ;  her  climate, 
continental  and  Asiatic,  6 ;  her 
solid,  horizontal  geological  forma- 
tion, 7  ;  insufficient  moisture  of  her 
atmosphere,  8  ;  compared  to  North 
America,  11  ;  to  Brazil,  12 ;  is 
neither  Europe  nor  Asia,  10,  13, 
115  ;  poorness  of  her  physical  na- 
ture, 12  ;  her  characteristic — unity 
in  immensity,  15,  35-37  ;  divided 
into  two  main  zones  :  the  forest 
zone  and  the  steppe  zone,  16 ;  her 
population,  37-42  ;  her  wealth  of 
natural  products,  42,  43  ;  her  colo- 
nization, native  and  foreign,  43-50 ; 
a  land  and  people  of  contrasts, 
50-52  ;  her  ethnological  variety, 
57-60;  her  practical  relations  to 
Europe,  237-240  ;  her  connection 
with  Byzance,  246-248,  263-265, 
277 ;  her  condition  under  the  Ta- 
tars, 256-263  ;  under  the  Moscovite 
princes,  265-270 ;  her  social  con- 
stitution, 305-321 

Russian  people,  has  very  little  Mon- 
gol or  Tatar  blood,  80,  81,  86,  87  ; 
more  Finnic,  81,  82  ;   its  division 


into  Great-Russian,  Little-Russian, 
White-Russian,  107,  108 ;  fusion 
of  its  elements,  114,  115,  121 


Samogit,  one  of  the  three  languages 
spoken  by  the  I,etto-Lithuanians, 
105 

Samoy^ds,  a  Finnic  tribe,  67,  69 

Seasons,  their  variety  and  beauties, 
179-187 ;  their  influence  on  the 
national  character,  187-194 

Serbs,  Slavs  of  the  southern  branch, 
103 

Serfdom,  first  establishment  of,  176, 
note,  411-413  ;  not  universal,  414  ; 
its  character  and  effects,  414-418 

Siberia,  controls  Russia's  climate,  7 ; 
first  conquest  of,  by  Yerm^k,  278- 
281  (appendix) 

Slavophils,  the  champions  of  Russian 
nationality,  their  views  of  Russian 
history  and  civilization,  227  ;  their 
origin  and  doctrines,  228-233  \  re- 
action in  their,  favor,  233-235  ;  their 
standing  conflict  against  Occident- 
alism, 236,  237  ;  their  enthusiasm 
over  the  local  commune  (inir)y 

477,  504 

Slavs,  one  of  the  three  main  ethnical 
elements  of  Russia's  population, 
63 ;  an  Aryan  or  Indo-European 
race,  95  ;  their  characteristics,  96- 
98,  loi,  102  ;  their  place  in  the  his- 
tory of  human  culture,  98-100; 
their  geographical  distribution, 
103-110  ;  scant  knowledge  of  them, 
241-243 

Slovens,  a  Slavic  tribe  of  the  southern 
branch,  95,  103 

Solovidf,  the  nihilist  and  would-be 
regicide,  212,  214 

Steppes,  southeastern,  dried-up  bed 
of  an  ancient  sea,  9 ;  one  of  Russia's 
two  main  zones,   16 ;  steppe-zone 


INDEX. 


587 


described,    19-22 ;    two  kinds  of, 
fertile  and  barren,  24 ;  fertile,  25- 
28;  barren,  or  Uralo-Caspian,  28- 
30 ;  Kirghiz,  29 ;  Kalmyk,  30 
Suomi,  the  Finns  of  Finland,  68 


"Table  of  Ranks,"  instituted  by 
Peter  the  Great,  the  foundation 
of  bureaucracy,  293 ;  its  scheme 
and  dispositions,  373-375  ;  its  ef- 
fects, 377-379 

Tatars,  one  of  the  three  main  ethnical 
elements  of  Russia's  population, 
63  ;  of  Turanian  stock,  Uralo-Altaic 
branch,  64 ;  first  appeared  in  Russia 
with  Jinghiz-khan,  77 ;  identical 
with  Turks,  77,  78 ;  their  history, 
qualities,  and  position  in  Russia, 
82-94 ;  their  coming  and  domina- 
tion, 256-263 ;  beaten  at  Kulikovo 
on  the  Don,  267 

Tchekhs  (Bohemians),  Slavs  of  the 
western  branch,  104 

Tcheremyss,  a  Finnic  tribe  of  the 
southern  branch  on  the  Volga,  68 

Tchernozidm,  see  Black  Mould. 

Tchemysh^fsky,  essayist  and  novel- 
ist, the  champion  of  ultra-nihilism, 
author  of  What  is  to  be  Done? 
201-203,  209 

Tchetchens,  Caucasian  tribe,  63 

Tchin  ("  grade  "  as  instituted  by  the 
Table  of  Ranks),  an  old  Slavic 
word,  373,  note 

Tchud,  etymology,  63  ;  see  Finn  ; 
also  a  separate  tribe,  70 

Tchuvash,  a  Finnic  tribe  of  the 
southern  branch,  on  the  Volga,  68  ; 
partly  Turkish  or  Tatar,  78 

Tolstoy,  Minister,  206,  note 

Towns,  their  peculiar  character,  323 ; 
their  sparseness,  324 ;  their  social 
organization,  330-333 

Tundra^  what  it  is,  11,  17 


Turanian  stock  or  group  of  races,  as 
opposed  to  the  Indo-European  or 
Aryan  and  the  Semitic,  64 ;  Uralo- 
Altaic  branch  of,  ib. 

Turks,  represented  in  Russia  by  the 
Tatars,  77,  78 ;  often  mixed  with 
Mongols,  78 ;  their  place  between 
the  Finnic  and  Mongolian 
branches,   ib. 

U 

Ugrians,  a  Finnic  tribe  in  Asia,  67 

Ukrainophilism  and  its  puerile  pre- 
tensions, 119-121 

Ural  Mountains,  insufficient  defence, 
7  ;  their  nature  and  office,  9,  10 ; 
crossed  by  the  forest  zone  and  the 
steppe  zone,  16 

Uralo-Altaic  branch  of  the  Turanian 
stock,  64 ;  comprises  Finns,  Ta- 
tars, Mongols,  ib.;  its  characteris- 
tics, 64-66 

Uralo-Caspian  steppe  region,  irre- 
claimably  barren,  28-30 ;  fit  only 
for  pastoral  life,  39 

Ural  River,  also  Yaik,  proposed  as 
frontier  line,  8 


Vald^y  Mountains,  the  head  of  all 
the  great  rivers,  17,  18,  36 

Varangians,  were  they  Slavs  or  Ger- 
mans ?  244 ;  the  German  theory, 
245 ;  the  Slavic  side  of  the  question, 
253-255  (appendix) 

Velikoruss,  see  Great-Russians. 

Vends,  an  ancient  Slavic  tribe,  95 ; 
some  few  still  in  existence  in 
Lausitz,   104 

Veses,  a  Finnic  tribe  in  the  west  of 
Russia,  69 

Village  Communities,  have  their 
prototype  in  the  family,  486-504  ; 
large  ones,  of  the  Ural  Cosacks, 
505-507  ;  of  northern  Russia,  507, 


588 


INDEX. 


508 ;  manner  of  dissolving  them, 
548-550  ;  cases  of  dissolution  rare, 

550-552 
Voguls,  a  Finnic  tribe  in  the  Ural,  68 
Volga,  river,  the  central  artery  of 

Russia,   5 ;  proposed  by  some  as 

frontier  line,  8 
Voti^ks,  a  Finnic  tribe  of  the  Biar- 

mian  branch,  on  the  Viatka,  68 

W 

White-Russians  (Bieloruss),  occupy 
the  •western  part  of  Russia,  108 

Winter,  its  severity  in  the  northern 
or  forest  zone,  18 ;  in  the  steppe 
zone,  21,  22  ;  its  tasks  and  pleas- 
ures, 141,  142 ;  impairs  moral  en- 
ergy, 143,  and  physical,  144 ; 
protection  of  houses  from,  158 
(appendix) 

Women,  have  no  rights  to  property 
in  the  peasant  family,  493 ;  their 
personal  effects  and  hoard  (ko- 
rdbkaj,  494 ;  their  subordinate 
and  unhappy  condition,  501-503 


Yagellons,  the  great  royal  family  of 
the  Lithuanians,  105 

Yaik,  see  Ural  River. 

Y^niss^y,  Siberian  river,  5,11 

Yerm^k,  the  Cosack  chief,  first  con- 
queror of  Siberia,  278-281  (appen- 
dix) 


Zadruga,  the  Siberian  form  of  family 
and  village  communities,  479,  487, 
note  ;  491,  note;  492 

Zhpadniki,  see  "Occidentals." 

Zapordgs,  Cosacks  of  Little-Russia, 
117 

Zones  ;  forest  zone  and  steppe  zone, 
naturally  antagonistic,  16 ;  de- 
scribed, 16-22  ;  Black  Mould,  22-24 

Zyrians,  a  Finnic  tribe  of  the  Biar- 
mian  branch,  on  the  Dvin^  and 
Petcli6ra,  68 


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